Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/408

 396 FEDERAL REPORTER. �of the art, the many and futile attempts to construct a secnre safe door, the demand of the public for security against the enforced surrender of a combination, the success of Sargent's thought and experiment, the satisfaction with which his resuit has been accepted by the public, and the change which his work has wrought in the art of safe building, so that this "triple combination" is now very extensively used, prove that the opinions of able theorizers are at variance with history. �It is next urged that the third claim of the re-issue is void, because it was abandoned by the patentee upon the objec- tion of the patent-ofBce when the original application was pending. In Sargent's original application he made one broad claim. The application was rejected by the examiner, whose decision was reversed by the board of examiners. The examiner then rec[ue8ted that a new application be made, upon the ground that the case presented to the board was not the same case which had bpen presented to him. A new application was made, containing only the first two claims of the re-issue. Then followed a long and earnestly-con- tested litigation in the pate^t-ofiBce between various inter- fering applicants, in which apparently both patentability and priority were disoussed. The Little application contained the broad claim, and the board of examiners said, at one etage of the litigation, whether this question was properly before them or not, that this claim was patentable ; so that when -the question came before them upon appeal from the decision of the examiner against the Sargent re-issue, the board say : "The claim in eontroversy is the same in sub- stance as the first claim of Little, whose application was once in interference with Sargent, and which was admitted to be patentable by the oflSce at the time of the declaration of the interference. The patentability of Little's claim has once been before us in the aforesaid interference, and after full argument we concluded that his claim was tenable, and held that some one who was first to combine with the boit work on a vault or safe door, key lock and time lock, acting independently of each other but jointly upon the boit work, ��� �