Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/918

 904 FEDERAL REPORTER, �part of the territory involved in this suit was not conveyed hj the original assignaient from Hunt. �A large mass of testimony has been put into the cases bear- ing upon the question of novelty, and the state of the art at the tims these inventions are claimed to have been inade- The defendants have introduced voluminous proofs tending to show the public use of barbed wire for fencing purposes long prior to any of these alleged inventions, We will not take the time to examine those proofs in detail, but dispose of that branch of the case by saying that these proofs fail to satisfy us that barbed wire for fencing purposes had ever been pub- liely known or used prior to these inventions in such manner as to defeat these inventions for want of novelty. We do not intend to be understood as intimating that the witnesses who have testified to the varions instances of the use of barbed wire for fencing purposes have been guilty of intentional false Bwearing, but.simply to say that this proof, which is almost wholly made up of the recollections of witnesses revived after the lapse of many years, and contradicted, as it is in most instances, by the explicit testimony of other equally credible witnesses, leaves so much doubt as to the actual existence of these various barbed wire fonces, or any of them, as to make it at least unsafe ground on which to defeat a patent, The rule as to the degree of proof required to defeat a patent by showing prior use is well stated in the following authorities : �In Coffin Y. Ogden, 18 Wall, 120, the opinion having been delivered by Mr, Justice Swayne, it is said: "The in- vention or discovery relied upon as a defence must have been complete and capable of producing the resuit sought, and this must be shown by the defendant. The burden of proof rests upon him, and every reasonable doubt should be resolved against him," So, too, Judge Wheeler, in the case of Web- ster Loom Co. V. Higgins, 16 0, G. 675, says : "The burden of proof rests upon the defendant to show beyond any fair doubt the prior knowledge and use set up," �In Ilowe V. Underwood, 1 Fisher, 175, Judge Sprague said : "How invariable is it that after a great invention has been ����