Tum FIRE-EXTINGUVISHER ossm. 43
inventor whose invention had, at the time of the passage of the act,
gone into public use, says that the question is set at rest by Evans v.
Eaton, and that he had never doubted the constitutional authority of
congress to make such a grant. _ _
The right which the public has acquired to use the thing invented, _
by reason of the applicant for a patent failing to do something pre-
scribed by congress, and the necessity for which congress might, by
previous legislation, have dispensed with, has never been held to be
a vested right. The cases of Evans v. Eaton, supra; Evans v. Jor-
dan, 9 Granch, 199; Bloomer v. Stolley, 5 McLean, 161; Jordan v.
Dobson, 2 Abb. (U. S.) 408, hardly leave this question debatable.
It is further contended bythe respondents, in opposition to the va-
lidity of the complainant’s patent, that as by its terms the act of
congress relieved the heirs of the inventor from all disabilities, pre-
venting them from renewing or reviving an application by the admin-
istrator for a patent, provided the alleged invention should be found
to have been new and useful at the time of filing such application,
that "the time of Bling such application" means the Bling of the ap-
plication by the administrator, and, consequently, if the invention -
was not new at that date, the commissioner was not authorized to
grant the patent. It would be a singular miscarriage of the obvious
intention of congress if this was the necessary interpretation of the
language used in the act. It was always conceded that at the date
of the application made bythe administrator, viz., February 19, 1876,
the invention was not new. The strongest argument in favor of the
relief given by congress was the fact that the patent granted to Car-
lier &. Vignon in 1869 had been in 1876 declared void for want of
novelty, because Graham’s invention, which he had described in 1837,
had been proved to have been successfully used as early as 1853.
The purpose of the act is remedial and beneBcial, and is to be so con-
strued, if possible. I think the fair construction of it is that the
heirs of the inventor are relieved from all disabilities which would
prevent the administrator from renewing or reviving an application .
for a patent for a novel method of extinguishing Bres. The adminis-
trator is authorized to renew said application, and the commissioner
is authorized to grant letters patent for the invention or inventions
contained in such application, if the alleged inventions should be
found to have been new and useful atthe time of Bling such applica- ·
tion. It is, I think, clearly intended and sufficiently expressed that
the application which was to be revived or renewed was the applica-
tion of the original inventor. i Taking, then, the date of the Bling
of the original application and speciBcations, November 23, 1837, as
the point of time to which is to be referred the question of novelty, V
there has been no testimony at all adduoed tending to disprove novelty
at that time, except the description of the Manby machine in the
Mechanics Magazine, London, 1824,pp. 28-31, and the English
patent to Bakewell, issued March 8, 1832. ·