WESTERN UN10N TEL. oo. ·v. BAL·rmoEE & 0. TEL. oo. 35
of the original when the circumstances rebuttedany presumption of
inadvertence or mistake in the wording of the claim of the original.
It appeared that the claims of the reissue were enlarged in order to
embrace articles made bythe defendant subsequent to the date of the
original and not covered by the claim; and it also appeared that what
was sought for by the reissue was industriously excluded from the
description in the original.
This is not such a case. The claim in the original patent was not
one as to which it can be said that the patentee had no ground to sup-
pose it to be narrower than his invention. It did not necessarily and
unequivocally coniine the patentee to a combination requiring a con-
denser in connection with the relay at each station. While that might
be the interpretation, which, on first impression, would be suggested
to the mind of the patentee, there was, nevertheless, room to contend
for one which would give him all he was entitled to. Indeed, it ap-
pears that the patent-office was of the opinion that the patentee was
restricted by the description and drawings to the use of a condenser
at one station only. Nothing in the afiidavit indicates that the reissue
was applied for in view of any new apparatus or patent brought into
existence intermediate his application and the date ofthe original.
There was no motive for enlarging the claim which did not exist when
he applied for the original patent. The only circumstance that is
suggested to show that he did not intend to claim originally what he
claimed in his application for a reissue is that, shortly before he made
his application for the original, he had made an application, which
was withdrawn, which contained a claim as follows:
“In a telegraph apparatus for double transmission, operated as described,
a condenser in combination with the relay, and resistance coil connected there-
with, for the pu1·pose of preventing the effect of the return current due tothe
static charge of the line."
In that application the preliminary statement of the nature of the °
invention and the descriptive parts of the specification differed in
many respects from those substituted in the new application. It
is apparent on the face of the claim, which makes a resistance coil
(or rheostat) an element of the combination, that it was in this re-
spect narrower than the claim in the new application. It was not
· limited by the words "at each station," but in other respects was a
narrower claim. There was nothing in the language of the applica-
tion to indicate that the patentee supposed his combination would not
be operative if the condenser was employed at one station only, or
that his claim would be too broad, unless limited as expressed. In
short, there is nothing in the circumstance that he substituted a new
application for one previously made to distinguish the transaction
from the common one, where an inventor is dissatisfied with the con-
tents of his application and wishes to exercise his privilege of pre-
paring and making a new one which shall more carefully and com-
pletely protect his rights. There is no fair reason for assuming that