APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of New Jersey.
The complainant, Burr, as assignee of a patent granted to Henry A. Wells for 'an improvement in the machinery for making hat-bodies, and in the process of their manufacture,' filed a bill in the court below against Duryee and others for infringement. The patent to Wells was granted originally April 25, 1846. It was surrendered in 1856, and reissued in two separate patents; one for the improved machine, the other for the process. In the spring of 1860 these patents were extended, and afterwards, December 3, of that year, they were surrendered and reissued with what were alleged to be amended specifications; the bill being filed on these reissues of 1860, numbered respectively No. 1086 and No. 1087; the former for process, and the latter for machinery. The court below dismissed the bill, and the case came here by appeal.
The chief questions in this court were in effect,--
1. Whether a certain machine, patented to one Seth Boyden, infringed in terms the machine part of the patent originally granted to Wells?
2. If it did not, whether, under the right given by the Patent Act of 1836 (§ 13), to surrender and have a reissue in certain cases provided for by the act, the owner of the original patent could, by such surrender and reissue of a patent, enlarge its operation in a way which the present complainant sought to do, and which is stated farther on?
3. Whether Wells was the original inventor of the process part of his patent?
In their more general aspect, however, the first two questions involved some of the fundamental principles in the law of the issue and reissue of patents; and they were argued elaborately and with great ability on both sides.
The learned Justice, GRIER, J., who delivered the opinion in one of the cases here reported (see postea), refers to the 'large museum of exhibits in the shape of machines and models' which had 'been presented to the court,' and which, he states, were 'absolutely necessary to give the court a proper understanding of the merits of the controversy.' Most of them were introduced by the defendant, and they were arranged and explained with admirable clearness by one of his counsel, Mr. George Harding. Drawings-of which but three can here be given-supply imperfectly originals thus advantageously presented. Without them, however, no idea at all can be had of the case; and the reporter trusts that while, from the special difficulty above referred to of understanding the case perfectly, without an inspection of actual machines, he will be pardoned for a statement of it which may be not intelligible to all; he will, on the other hand, be excused for incumbering a book of law reports with drawings, which, in the eyes of a casual observer, will give to it the aspect of a treatise on physical science, more than the aspect of one on the science of jurisprudence.
Any complete understanding of the principles which the case embraces and settles requires some preliminary explanation of the particular art which happened to be the one in which the questions were presented to this court; the art, to writ, of the hatter.
EXPLANATION OF THE ART.
Hat-bodies are manufactured out of fibres of fur or wool felted together. The fact that when the fibres of wool or fur are moistened and rubbed together, they would interweave spontaneously and form the fabric called felt, has been known from a remote antiquity. The process of felting is believed to have been anterior to the art of weaving.
In Asia felted wool was used at a very early day for making tents, cushions, and carpets. It was known to the Greeks as early as the age of Homer, and is mentioned by him, and also by Xenophon and Herodotus. Its use was introduced into Rome from the Greeks, and it is mentioned by Pliny. Felt hat-makers appeared in France, in Nuremberg, and in Bavaria, early in the fourteenth century. It had been conjectured by Monge, a French savant, in 1790, that felting was probably due to small scales on the fibres of fur or wool; but, as nothing of the kind was found by the aid of the microscope, the idea was set aside by Dr. Young and