Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/412

 SELDEN t). STOCKWELL SELF-LIGHTING GAS-BUBNEB CO. 397- �is sufficient to bring a case within the exception if the assigninent which divested the inventer of his interest. in the patent was made before July 8, 1870. In the present case the inventors and patentees assigned the original patent in July, 1866, �3. It is contended that No. 8,490 is void because it is a reissue of a reissue, and that the statute does not authorize the reissue of a reissued patent. But section 4916 authorizes the reissue of "any patent." A reissued patent is none the less a patent, within this section, because it is a reissued patent. The section calls it after its issue a "patent so reissued." �4. It is urged that a reference to the original patent, and to the record of the reissues, discloses that the original patent was not inop- erative or invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient specification. But this question was conclusively decided by the commissioner of patents, by the fact of his granting the reissues, the application, in each case haring set forth that the aurrendered patent was inopera* tive by reason of an insufficient specification. Seymour v. Osbornp, 11 Wall. 516, 643-545. :,, �5. It is objected that in his application for No. 8,490 Selden made oath that No. 7,927 was inoperative by reason of an insufficient speci- fication, and that his attorney afterwards, in a letter to the commis- sioner of patents, stated that the ground of the application was that the claims :of No. 7,927 were too broad, in view of a prior Bnglish patent. The decision of the commissioner that a case provided for by section 4916 existed is not reviewable. �6. The same view applies to the objection that Selden's. oath did not point ont the particular insufficiency in the specification, or how No. 7,927 was inoperative. �7. It is objected that No. 7,927 and No. 7,928 were each of them issued for all parts of the thing patented. The point takenis that the original specification describes two forms of case— the circular case and the extended tube case ; that these two forms of case are not "distinct and separate parts of the thing patented;" that each form of case has all the parts of the thing patented ; and that each of said reissues is void for want of jurisdiction in the commissioner to issue it as a patent for a distinct and separate part of the thing patented^ The commissioner has, by section 4916, power in his dis- cretion, on the surrender of a patent, to "cause several patents to be issued for distinct and separate parts of the thing patented," on pay- ment of the reissue fee for each. The original specification describes ��� �