The Federal Reporter. Volume 4: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. October-December, 1880. Page: 216
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FEDERAL REPORTER.
their combination and results. He does not pretend that the
combination has, in itself, any capacity to produce any useful
result, and nowhere therein does he indicate that it may be
used except in connection with external dry heat. But, in
the re-issue, he states broadly that his invention extends to
whatever form the apparatus, in its various forms, may take,
or in whatever form the heat may be applied, or however the
furnace may be combined with the apparatus.
The counsel for the defendant, at the hearing, insisted that
this was an enlargement of the scope of the patent; that
more was claimed than was suggested in the original; and
that hence the re-issue was void, not being for the same
invention.
I do not think the re-issue is obnoxious to such a charge.
In view of the state of the art, an apparatus for rendering the
fat and drying the refuse of animal matter is patentable,
apart from any connection with other instrumentalities by
which it is to be made operative and efficient. Because one
mode only is indicated in the original, the patentee is not
shut up to the one mode in the re-issue, as long as it is not
of the essence of the invention. The law, indeed, requires
him to disclose some mode by which it can be rendered prac-
tically useful, but it does not follow that he is confined to
that, and may use no other. The gist of the invention is the
apparatus, or combination of parts, and not any particular
instrumentality by which it is put in operation. Seymour v.
Marsh, 2 O. G. 675; Wheeler v. The Clipper Mower Co. Id.
442. It may be proper also, in this connection, to allude to
another ground of opposition to the complainant's patent,
urged by the defendant in the argument.
The proof was that the complainant had never put his
alleged invention into practical use, and it was insisted from
this fact that the inventor could not maintain a suit for its
infringement. But this is not the law, when the patentee is
a citizen of the United States. In Wheeler v. The Clipper
Mower Co., supra, Judge Woodruff, in considering this objec-
tion to the validity of a patent, says: "If the invention be
such that when the thing invented shall be constructed
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Boyle, Peyton. The Federal Reporter. Volume 4: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. October-December, 1880., legislative document, 1881; Saint Paul, Minnesota. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc36333/m1/230/?rotate=270: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.