Patents.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 9, 1 July 1911, Page 726

Patents.

Paper read before the Canterbury Engineering Society by Mr. Climie. .*• (Continued.) > Having briefly touched upon the origin of patent law, we will now proceed to consider the essential of a patentable invention. For sake of convenience, patentable inventions may be divided into the following classes:— 1. New and useful machines for new or old purposes and improvements in existing machinery 2. New and useful combinations in mechanical parts and of materials; 3. Improvements in existing manufactures, processes, or parts of processes; 4. Novel and useful results and products of manufactures and processes; 5. New or improved processes for which

special machinery may or may not be necessary;

6. New principles coupled with the mode of carrying the same into effect. ,

A short examination of each of these heads and a few examples will make these matters clear. A new machine or contrivance may be for an entirely new purpose or it may be for use in connection with an old purpose. The first is an extremely rare class of invention, while the second is most common. As an example of the first, take the subject of the transmission of speech over long distances by electricity. Here was a new purpose, and the telephone, with its vibrating plates, transmitter and receiver, formed the new apparatus for this new purpose. Therefore the telephone was a patentable invention of the first order; namely, a new apparatus for a new purpose. As an example of a new machine for use up connection with an old purpose, the original sewing machine might be instanced. Sewing is among the oldest of arts, but the first sewing machine was an absolutely new contrivance for this old purpose, and therefore forms good subject matter, though not so high class as the telephones, seeing that the purpose to which it is applied is old. Improvements in existing machinery, which is also included in the first class, probably form the bulk of the patented inventions. As an example of this kind, I may instance the hundreds of patented improvements on the original sewing machine. In all classes of machinery of which large quantities are used, an improvement that may appear to an outsider to constitute a very slight advance is often the source of a fortune to its inventor, and is, of course, patentable subject matter.

With regard to the second class, namely, new and useful combinations of mechanical parts and of materials, it must be said at the outset, that a combination to warrant a patent must, of course, show invention, obvious combinations not being good subject matter. Therefore, in every case it is necessary to take the merits into consideration to decide whether or not the combination shows invention. All engineers have at their disposal a certain number of wellknown mechanical parts and motions which form the stock-in-trade of the mechanical arts. In building a machine for a certain purpose an engineer may make use of these and by combining them, produce an apparatus fit to perform a certain function. So long as he merely exercises judicious selection and puts the different parts to their obvious uses, he does not necessarily exercise invention, bu; only the skill of an ordinary workman,' and in that case the machine, although perhaps the first of its kind, is not necessarily a patentable invention. As an example of the simplest form of combination, we may take the case of the first sausage-making machine, which was the mere combining of a well-known mincing machine and an equally wellknown machine for filling skins. The question of invention in this case, which was brought before the Court of Appeal was decided against the patent. Still, even this simplest type of combination might be patentable if the method and means used to connect them called for invention. For example, merely to place a folding machine in line with a printing machine, so as to print and fold continuously, instead of

separately as before, would not be invention if nothing more were done. But if the continuous printing and folding involved some necessary transmitting mechanism, requiring design and the exercise of invention to pass each printed sheet separately to the folders, then the combination would be patentable subject matter. It is impossible to patent the combination of a concrete thing with an abstract property as Baron Pollock, in deciding a case of this nature, once said: “You cannot have a valid claim for the combination of 2y 2 d. with a pound of butter.

Neither is it possible to patent a combination of two things, between which no real combination exists.

: In dealing with a claim in which a particular chain adjusting gear for a cycle was claimed in combination with a step for mounting such cycle, the judge remarked that the patentee might as well have said: “I claim that gear in combination with a hat on a man’s head.

Referring now to class three. Improvements in existing manufactures, processes or parts of processes, we might take, for example, the manufacture of pile fabrics. Instead of adopting the usual plan of weaving the pile in loops and cutting these loops by an after operation, an inventor might produce a new method of weaving pile fabrics, face to face, in a double web and cut the pile by an after operation of separating one fabric from the other, thus saving both time in the weaving and in the pile cutting. This would be a patentable improvement in that particular manufacture.

In dealing with, the next class, namely, novel and useful results and products of manufactures and processes, it might he mentioned that doubt appears to exist as to whether a new product, apart from the means used to produce it, is good subject matter for a patent. The most reliable writers on patent law lean rather against the proposition. (To be continued.)