Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/923

 WASEBUEN i MOBN MANUP'i» ï!0. ». HAISH. 90& �order to entitle it to the protection of the statute. To be newin the sense of the aet it must be the prôdùct of original thought or inventive skill, and not a mere formai or meohan- ical change of what was old and well known; but the effect produced by the change is often an appropriate though nota oontroUing consideration in determining th« char ac ter of the change itself. " �Tested by the mie of utility here euggested, this record abundantly shows that the device in question bas been ac- cepted by the public to an extent which bas hardly heretofore followed the most successful inventions. Its utility must be considered as a conceded fact. From what has already been developed, it is clear that it has made possible the cultiva- tion of the extensive praries of the west, the pampas of BrazU, and the steppes of Eussia, where, before the introduction of this cheap mode of fencing, it was imposible ; and it has, even to agreat extent, already superseded the uSeof wooden fonces in the timberted portion of the country; and the question i&, to whom but these inventors is. the public indebted for this widely-useful device ? > �The third objection, that the re-issues are invàlid, involves a consideration of the original patents in their ord^r, and those patents as they now stand amended and re-issued. �The Hunt patent of July 23, 1867, was fôr his method of "providing the wircs of a wire fence with a series of spui wheels." ^ The re-issued is "foir "à fence wire prbvided with spurs for the pùrpose specified." In other words, what Hurit at first claimed as his invention, and obtained a patent for, was his special mode of arming the wires of a wire fence with spur whfiels or barbs ; but in his re-issue he claimed as his invention a barbed fence wire as a new article of manufac- ture, and it is argued that while he may have been the first to place hia particular kind of spur or barb on a fence wire, and may bave been entitled to a patent for such specifie device, yet he nowhere claimed to be the inventer of barbed or spurred wire as such, and therefore his broad claim in the re-issue should not have been allowed and cannot be aus- tained. ����