Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/603

. M'kAY r. DIBERT. 591, �(2) a patent for the process by which the result'waa achieved, and (3) a patent for the product of the process as a new arti- cle of manufacture; and if such patents expire ai different times bas the court the power to decree that the younger pat- ents in the series shall die when the older one runs out ? Or, to state the proposition more suocintly, is there authority in the law to continue to an inventer the monopoly in the product of a machine after the machine itself has become public property by f alling into the domain of public use ? In deter- mining such a question reference must be had, of course, to the law as it stood when the several patents were issued. These were the acts of July i, 1836, and March 3, 1839, which were substantially the same as the present statute ia regard to patentable subjects. �By the sixth section of the first-recited act the commis- sioner of patents was authorized to grant letters patent to any person who had diseovered or invented "any new and usefui art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or an^ new and useful improvement in any art, machine^ manufac- ture, or composition of matter, not known or used by others before his or their discovery or invention thereof, and not, at the time of his application for a patent, in public use or on sale with his consent or allowance as the inventer or dis- coverer." By the seventh section of the later act such public use or sale shall not avoid the patent, nnless the same has' continued for two years prior to the application for the pat- ent. It is here we find the scope and extent, as well as the limitation, of the power of the commisBioner of patents in regard to granting or withhoidiiig letters patent. If the in- venter, after obtaining his first patent for the machine, had waited for more than two years before applying for the pro- eess and product patents, therô may have been such dis- elosure and public use of the invention that the limitation would have applied, and ■the patent-office been compelled, under the provisions of the supplement of 1839, to have rejected the subsequent application. But no such time elapsed, and I am of the opinion that it was competent for the patentee, within the two years, to talce out his proeesB ahii ����