Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/868

 860 FEDERAL REPORTER, �give it any attention. Under the circumstances it must be regarded as an aeknowledgment of its truth; and yet lie. tells us, in the same deposition, thci after lie learned that the patent office had deelared tho interference, and after he had heard the testimony taken therein, he made a thorough inqniry into the validity of both his own and the Bigelow patent, and ascertained that the same device had been nsed many years ago, and was not novel ; that he learned this especially from the affidavits of Job W. Blackham and Henrietta Sanford, which he bas put in the case, and which, he says, were taken last spring during the pendency of the interference proeeed- ings. �With such an exhibition of the want of good faith on the part of the defendant in pretending to the possession of exclusive rights under patents which he knew were void, either because they were anticipated by Bigelow or because they were not novel, it bas not surprised me that the witness on whom he principally relied (Blackham) bas come forward and retracted ail the substantial parts of his first affidavit, in which he testified to the prior use of the patented improve- ments. �Bvery one having experience in these matters knows how easy it is to exhibit an article of manufacture to an honest and well meaning person, and procure his alïïdavit that many years before he saw or made something similar to it. The witness may be quite sincere, but altogetlier mistaken. Some small difference may exist, too apparently insiguificant to be carried in the eye or the memory, and yet of such a cbaracter as to impart to the article ail that is .vital or valua- ble in it. In the present case Blackham swears, in his deposition of May 20, 1879, that from 20 to 23 years ago, while he was foreman in the hat manufactory of I. H. Pren- tice, of Brooklyn, New York, he "invented and made a cer- tain sweat band or sweat leather, for use in bats, precisely similar in every material part with a sample exhibited, " to- wit, one of the Bracher sweats. �And yet, in December following, he had shown to him one of the same Bracher sweats, and then says : "No such sweata ��� �