Richardson v. Hicks

Citations

• 1 MacA. Pat. Cas. 335
• 20 F. Cas. 710

Syllabus

<p>Commissioner and examiners examined under oath — section 11 oe act op 1839 construed. — -The provisions of the eleventh section of the law of 1839, that the Commissioner and the examiners in the Patent Office may be examined under oath in explanation of the principles of the machine or other thing, &c., must be considered in connection with the similar provisions of the seventh section of the code of 1836, governing appeals to the board of examiners.</p> <p>Sm — examination may be at larse. — The section (section 11, act of 1839) means that-the explanation which it authorizes to be required of the Commissioner and examiners may be so full and clear an explanation of the principles as to enable the judge duly to apply and weigh the evidence offered to support the issue in the case, and not to be limited to a mere exposition of the terms used. Such explanations so given, the judge is bound to respect as part of the case.</p> <p>Declarations and conversations oe party — exception to rule in patent oases. — The exception in patent cases to the rule that the declarations and conversations of the plaintiff are not admissible in evidence is founded upon necessity and to prevent a failure of justice by reason of the impossibility of otherwise, proving an invention; and such declarations, when admitted, should be free from suspicion, and accompanied by acts forming the res gestx, to which the credit is to be given, and not to the declarations.</p> <p>Sm — machine not produoed in evidence__Doubted, whether the rule laid down in Railroad Company v. Stimpson, that the conversations and declarations of an inventor stating that he had made an invention, and describing its details and explaining its operation, are properly to be deemed an assertion of his right at that time as an inventor to the extent of the facts and details which lie then makes known and admissible in evidence, can be applied to a case whore the declarations relate to an actual machine already made, which wa