Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/301

 286 FEDERAL REPORTBR. �Under this section it is now settled that the decision of the com- missioner reissuing the patent is final and conclusive, and is not subject to review in any court, except as to the identity of the invention. But if it be apparent upon the face of the patent that he has exceeded his authority and bas thus acted without jurisdic- tion, and that there is a manifest repugnancy between the old and new patent, then it must be held as a matter of legal construction that the new patent is not for the same invention as that embraced aud secured in the original patent. Under the language of the statute the commissioner can only authorize a reissue when the patent is inoperative or invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, or by reason of the patentee claiming as his own in- vention or discovery more than he had a right to claim as new. But in Seymour v. Osborne, 11 Wall. 5e4, it was said by Mr. Justice Clifford, in delivering the opinion, that — �" He may, doubtlesa, under that authority, allow the patentee to redescribe his invention, and to include in the description and claims of the patent not only what was well descrihed before, but whatever else was suggested or substantially indicated in the specification or drawings, which properly belong to the invention as actually made and perfected." �This case and that of Battin v. Taggert, 17 How. 74, have very generally been accepted by patentees as authority for the proposition that a patent might be reissued so as to cover everything suggested in the drawings in the original patent, although the claims and the introductory statement of the invention may have had reference solely to another portion of the machine, and other persons might be thus led to suppose that the patentees regarded nothing else as his invention or consented to abandon his right to the remainder to the public. �The cases in the supreme court are not easily reconcilable, more probably from the difficulty of understanding the exact question decided, in the absence of drawings and models, than from any change of view as to the law, and the cases in the circuit courts are in hopeless confusion. The tendency of later cases in the supreme court, however, has been to hold the patentees to a much more rigid rule than that indicated in Seymour v. Osborne, and the court has fre- quently expressed its disapproval of the practice which has grown up of claiming everything which might have been claimed in the original patent, to the detriment of those who may have acted upon the sup- position that such claims had been abandoned to the public. Thus, in Russell v. Dodge, 93 U. S. 460, the original patent svas for a pro- ��� �