Thompson (1 W. P. C. 244), Dallas, J., said, ' It is not enough to have discovered what was unknown to others before, if the discovery be confined to the knowledge of the party having made it; but it must have been communicated more or less, or it must have been more or less made use of, so as to constitute discovery as applied to subjects of this sort.'

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A man may publish to the world,' said Tindal, C. J., in Gibson v. Brand (1 W. P. C. 628), that which is perfectly new in all its uses, and has not before been enjoyed, and yet he may not be first and true inventor; he may have borrowed it from some other person; he may have taken it from a book; he may have learnt it from a specification; and then the Legislature never intended that a person who had taken all his knowledge from another, from the labours and assiduity or ingenuity of another, should be the man who was to receive the benefit of another's skill.'

But, in order to break down the patent of the person who was de facto the first to produce a useful article by the patented process, by means of which that article can be offered to the public at an economical rate, the fact of anticipation, if that is relied on, must be very clearly made out. Von Heyden v. Neustadt (50 L. J. N. S. Ch. 126.)

Many substances have been produced by chemists in their laboratories in small quantities, which, if they could be produced in large quantities at a moderate cost, so as to be merchantable commodities, would be extensively used by the public. An inventor who succeeds in doing this will not be considered to have been. forestalled because the substance has been already produced on a small scale as a chemical curiosity. He will be held to have been the true and first inventor, and his patent will be supported because he has discovered a method of making for sale an article useful

The

to the public, and has thereby created a new manufacture. What the law looks to,' said Stuart, V. C., in the case of Young v. Fernie (4 Giff. 611), 'is the inventor and discoverer who finds out and introduces a manufacture which supplies the market for useful and economical purposes with an article which was previously little more than the ornament of a museum. plaintiff is an inventor of this class, and his patent is entitled to the protection of the law. I find that he has ascertained by a course of laborious experiment a particular class of materials among many, and a particular process among many, which has enabled him to create and introduce to the public a useful manufacture, which amply supplies the market with that which, until the use of the materials and processes and temperature indicated by him, had never been supplied for commercial purposes. At the date of his patent something remained to be ascertained which was necessary for the useful application of the chemical discovery of paraffine and paraffine oil. This brings it within the principle stated by Westbury, L. C., in the case of Hills v. Evans (4 De G. F. and J. 288). The manufacture with the materials and process indicated by him, according to the sense in which I understand the word "manufacture" to be used in the statute, was a new manufacture not in use at the date of his patent.'

It is sometimes argued that a patentee is not to be deemed the true and first inventor, if a patent for a similar object had been previously obtained by another inventor; but this objection will not prevail when it can be shown that the means by which the object is attempted to be accomplished are substantially different in the two cases.

The inventor in this case was referred to by Professor Huxley, P.R.S., in his Anniversary Address to the Royal Society 1883, as 'Mr. James Young, a chemist whose skilful application of theory to practice yielded him a colossal fortune.'

Kneller obtained a patent for an apparatus for the evaporation of liquids and solutions at a low temperature. The apparatus consisted of pipes or tubes, along which air was forced nearly to the bottom of the vessel containing the liquid to be evaporated, which air, passing through small holes in the submerged tubes, traversed the liquid and carried off the aqueous particles. The invalidity of this patent was attempted to be proved by showing that an invention having a similar object in view had been previously patented. But when it appeared that this invention consisted in propelling a quantity of heated air into the lower part of the vessel containing the liquid, and causing such air to pass through the liquid in streams, by means of a perforated coil of pipe or colander, the jury found that, although the substance of both inventions consisted in forcing air in finely divided streams through a fluid, for the purpose of facilitating evaporation, yet the modes by which this was effected in the two cases were sufficiently distinct to acquit the latter invention of being a piracy of the former; and that the latter patent was not invalidated by reason of want of novelty in the invention. The Court was of the same opinion, upon the application for a rule to set this verdict aside. (Hullett v. Hague, 1 Carp. Rep. 501; 2 B. and A. 370.)

In Minter v. Mower (1 W. P. C. 140) it appeared that the plaintiff had taken out a patent for an improvement in reclining chairs, which consisted in the application of a self-adjusting leverage to the back and seat of a chair, whereby the weight on the seat acted as a counterbalance to the pressure against the back. Mower, the defendant, made chairs in imitation of Minter's chair, and contended, in an action for an infringement of the patent, that the plaintiff was not the first and true inventor, alleging that one Brown had, pre

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viously to the patent, made chairs embodying a similar principle. It appeared, however, that although Brown's chair contained a similar principle to that patented, it was encumbered with machinery which rendered it a very different thing from the plaintiff's. Lord Denman said that, supposing Brown's chair to have been a chair with a self-adjusting leverage (i.e. a chair similar to the plaintiff's), if the encumbering additional part had been away, then the question is, whether the principle of self-adjustment was at all discoverable or thought of at that time. Because, it seems to me, if that principle might have been deduced from the machinery of the chair that was made, but it was so encumbered and connected with other machinery that nobody did make that discovery, or ever found out that they could have a chair with a self-adjusting leverage, by reason of that or any other defect in the chair actually made; it seems to me that does not prevent this from being a new invention, when the plaintiff says, I have discovered, throwing aside everything but this self-adjusting leverage itself, something that will produce an effect, which I think a very beneficial

one.'

One of the most recent cases relating to the question of prior publication was that of Saxby v. The Gloucester Waggon Co. (Court of App., June 23, 1882: S. C:, House of Lords, June 25, 1883). Saxby obtained a patent in 1874 for improvements in signalling apparatus on railways. The invention comprised a combination of two old contrivances having the same object in view. To show prior publication the following facts were proved. The particular improvement in question had been previously suggested to the mind of a Mr. Edwards, who was in the employment of the London and North-Western Railway Company, and who, by merely placing the two old contrivances side by side, had made

working drawings, which it was admitted showed a combination substantially the same as Saxby's subsequently patented modification. Two sets of tracings were made from the drawings in Edwards' office, where four or five draughtsmen were kept, and they were afterwards sent to the offices of the L. & N. W. R. Company at Crewe, where there were seventeen or eighteen draughtsmen. The general public visited these offices, and there was evidence that the drawings or tracings had there been seen by an engineer who was not in any way connected with the railway company. No secrecy or concealment was imposed or observed in regard to the drawings and tracings with reference either to the draughtsmen in these two offices or to members of the general public who might happen to visit them. Further, the particular combination had been explained by Edwards to a person in Saxby's employment, and rough sketches of the drawing were left with him. The drawings and tracings were laid before the chief engineer of the railway company, and they were submitted to their locomotive committee. Besides all this a working apparatus was made from the drawings by a person in the employment of the company, and this was placed in the pattern-shop, where it was subjected to trial. All this occurred before the end of the year 1873. It was held by a Divisional Court, by the Court of Appeal, and by the House of Lords, that these facts amounted to evidence of a publication of the invention; that such a disclosure of it had been made as placed it within reach of the public, and therefore that Saxby's patent was invalid.

The fact that there had previously been made a useless machine which turned out a failure will not invalidate the right of a patentee who has made a successful machine with the same object, although there may be a certain degree of similarity between some of the