Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/628

 616 FEDERAL REPORTBR. �Bu£5cient to support such claim. In one sense such patenl is operative and is not inoperative. Yet it is inoperative to extend to or claim the real invention, and the description may be defective or insufficient to support a claim to the real inven- tion, although the drawings and model show the things in respect to which the def ect or insufBciency of description exists, and show enough to warrant a new claim to the real inven- tion. It can never be held, as it never has been held, in a case where the point arose for decision, that a patent cannot be re-issued where a suit could be sustained on the specification and claim as they are. �The word "specification" wasused in section 13 of the pat- ent act of July 4, 1836, (6 St. at Large, 122,) in a differ- ent sense from that in which it is used in section 53 of the act of July 8, 1870, (16 St. at Large, 205,) and in sec- tion 4916 of the Revised Statutes, taken from section 53. The provision of section 13 of the act of 1836 was that a pat- ent might be re-issued when it was "inoperative or invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient description or specifioa^ tien," and the new patent was to be issued with a corrected "description ant^ specification." This language was based on that of section 6 of the act of 1836, which required the inventor to give in writing a description of his invention, and of the manner of making and using it, and also to "particu- larly specify and point out" what he claimed as his inven-! tion. Under this language the "specification" was the claim, and the rest was the description. This distinction was kept up in section 13 of the act of 1836. But in section 26 of the act of 1870 the word "specify" is omitted, and the words "specification and claim" are used, applying the word "spec- ification," in that connection, to the description alone. Thia state of things continues in section 4888 of the Eevised Stat- utes. Then, as before pointed out, the word "description" is omitted in section 53 of the act of 1870 and in section 4916 of the Eevised Statutes, and the word "specification" alone is preserved, meaning, when used without the word "claim," the description and the claim. But the meaning of section 13 of the act of 1836, and of section 53 of the actof ��� �