Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/735

 M'mILLAN V. BEES. . 727 �therefore, covered by it, he might make such arrangement the subject of a new claim and obtain a patent for it. �In The Suffolk Co. v. Hayden, 3 Wend, 315, a patent for an invention which was described, but net claimed, in a pre- vious patent was sustained upon the ground that the inven- tion, although described, was not covered by the first patent, and that this omission to include it did not operate as an abandonment of the improvement to the public. �There is another feature in the case which brings it into notable resemblance to the present case. Before the second patent above referred to was granted, an application by the same inventer was on file in the patent office for a patent for improvements in the interior arrangenaents of an elongated trunk, previously in use for cleaning cotton, among others, in the screen. Pending this application he applied for a patent for the improvement in the screen, in both the specifications filed similarly describing this improvement. A patent was granted upon this application, and sometime afterwards a patent also upon the original application. In reference to these two patents the court say that if they are for the same improvement the last one issued, and not the first, is void; obviously not for the reason that the description in both spe- cifications was the same, but that the allowance of the last patent was futile, and that the original application for it was auperseded and abandoned by the successful application for the first. But the court says further that the last issued patent does not appear to be for the same improvement cov- ered by the first, but for a combination with it of other de- vices, thus clearly implying that the patent is good. �Now these cases, with others of Uke character, establish : �1. That of two patents for the same invention the one last granted is void, although it may bave been first applied for. �2. Whether two patents cover the same invention must be determined by the tenor and scope of'their claims, not by the description in the specifications. �3. That separate patents for severable parts of the same invention may be granted, although the whole invention is iuUy described in each of them to explain the purpose and ��� �