Gayler v. Wilder/Dissent Daniel

by Peter Vivian Daniel

United States Supreme Court

51 U.S. 477

Gayler  v.  Wilder

Mr. Justice DANIEL, dissenting.

Differing from the majority in the decision just pronounced, I proceed to state the grounds on which my dissent from that decision is founded.

On two essential points in this cause, it seems to me that the learned justice who tried it at the Circuit has erred, and that the decision here should therefore have been for a reversal of his judgment. Those points involve, first, the right of the plaintiff below to maintain his action upon the title or right of action deduced from Fitzgerald through Enos and Benjamin Wilder; and secondly, a right to, or interest in the subject of the suit on the part of the plaintiff below, admitting to have been originally invented and used by some other person than Fitzgerald; a right founded upon an assumption that this subject had been used in private only, or had, in the language of the learned justice, been 'finally forgotten or abandoned' by such first inventor. These points are presented by the first and third exceptions of the plaintiffs in error to the rulings at the trial below. The plaintiff in the Circuit Court claimed by assignment from B. G. Wilder, assignee of Enos Wilder, assignee of Daniel Fitzgerald, alleged to have been the inventor of the Salamander safe. By the paper deduction of title, it appears that, on the 11th day of April, 1839, Fitzgerald, alleging that he had invented an improvement called the Salamander safe, for which he was about to apply for letters patent, for the consideration of five thousand dollars, sold the interest he then had, or might thereafter have, in this invention, to Enos Wilder; that Enos Wilder, on the 1st day of September, 1843, for the consideration of one dollar, assigned and transferred to the plaintiff all the right, title, and interest which he had derived from Fitzgerald, under the agreement of the 11th of April, 1839; that no patent issued for this Salamander safe until the year 1843, when a patent was granted to Daniel Fitzgerald, as the original inventor; that no patent for this invention has ever been granted either to Enos or B. G. Wilder, either as inventor or assignee of this safe; that the title, whatever it may be, rests upon the agreement between Fitzgerald and Enos Wilder, of the 11th of April, 1839, before the patent to the former.

It must be recollected, that this is an action at law; and in order to maintain it, the plaintiff was bound to set out and to prove a legal title. Has he done either? What was the character of the interest or title transferred from Fitzgerald to Enos Wilder? This could not transcend the interest or title possessed by Fitzgerald himself; and what was this? A title to any specific machine which he may have constructed, and of which no person could rightfully deprive him; and a claim upon the good-will and gratitude of the community, if in truth he should have conferred upon them a benefit by the discovery and construction of his machine. I speak now in reference to rights derivable from the common law; and independently of the Constitution or of statutory provisions. The mere circumstances of inventing and constructing a machine could no more inhibit its imitation, than would the structure or interior arrangement of a house of peculiar ingenuity or convenience prevent the like imitation by any one who could possess himself of its plan. The mere mental process of devising an invention enters not into the nature of property according to the common law; it forms no class or division in any of its enumerations or definitions of estates or property, and is a matter quite too shadowy for the practical character of that sturdy system.

A doctrine contrary to this, though with some discrepancy amongst the judges as to its extent, seems at one time to have obtained in the King's Bench, as propounded in the case of Millar v. Taylor, in 4 Burr., 2305, in opposition to the profound and unanswerable reasoning of Mr. Justice Yates; but upon a review of the same question in the Lords, in the case of Donaldsons v. Becket and others, the doctrine of the King's Bench was repudiated, and that of the common law, as asserted by Yates, Justice, vindicated and restored. And, indeed, if, according to the opinions of some of the judges in the case of Millar v. Taylor, the mere mental process of invention constituted an estate or property at the common law, and property vested in perpetuo, except so far as it should be transferred by the owner, it is difficult to perceive tha necessity of a cautious and complicated system for the investment and security of interests already perfect, and surrounded with every guard and protection which is inseparable under the common law from every right it has created or recoguized. But if the mere mental and invisible process of invention, apart from the specific, sensible, and individual structure, can be classed at all as property at law, it must partake of the character of a chose in action, much more so than an obligation or contract, the terms and conditions of which are defined and assented to by the contracting parties. To choses in action, it can scarcely be necessary here to remark, assignability is imparted by statutory enactment only, or by commercial usage. To hold that the single circumstance of invention creates an estate or property at law, and an estate and legal title transmissible by assignment, appears to me a doctrine not merely subversive of the common law, but one which contravenes the origin and course of legislation in England in relation to patent rights, and renders useless and futile both the constitutional provision and all the careful enactments of Congress for the security and transmissibility of the same rights. For why, as has been already remarked, should that provision and these enactments have been made for the establishment and security of that which was established and safe independently of both? I hold it, then, to be true, that the circumstance of invention invests no such perfect estate or right of property as can be claimed and enforced at law or in equity against the user of the same invention, either by subsequent inventors or imitators, and that any estate or property in the mere mental process of invention must be traced to and deducible from the Constitution and the acts of Congress alone. I cannot but regard as mischievous and alarming an attempt to introduce a quasi and indefinite, indefinable, and invisible estate, independently of the Constitution and acts of Congress, and unknown to the rules and principles of the common law.

It is the patent alone which creates an estate or interest in the invention known to the law, and which can be enforced either at law or in equity, either by the inventor or by the person to whom, by virtue of the statute, he may assign his rights. Down to the act of Congress of 1837, nothing but the estate, interest, or property created or invested by the patent itself, was made assignable. The language of the law is, that 'every patent,' 'the exclusive right under any patent,' 'the thing patented,' may be assignable. The fact or existence of a patent is in every instance inseparable from the right given. It is this fact and this only which impresses the quality of assignability. Of course, under these provisions there could be no transfer of the legal title previously to a patent.

By section sixth of the act of Congress approved March 3d, 1837, it is provided that thereafter any patent to be issued may be made to the assignee of the inventor or discoverer, upon the conditions set forth in that section. Yet still it is presumed that, until the issuing of a patent, so far is it from being true that a legal estate or title existed in such assignee, it is clear, on the contrary, that no legal title existed before the patent in the inventor himself, for it is the patent which constitutes his title. Of course, then, the assignee can at most hold nothing but an equity under such an assignment, which he may insist upon under this assignment against the inventor or against the government; but he has no legal title by force merely of such an assignment, and a fortiori he has no legal title, if the patent, notwithstanding such an assignment, is in fact issued to the inventor, but is thereby entirely excluded from all pretension to a legal title. Thus, in the case before us, the patent under which the plaintiff claims was, subsequently to the agreement between Fitzgerald and Enos Wilder, issued to Fitzgerald, the inventor, and, according to the proofs in the cause, has never been renewed to Enos Wilder, nor to any claimant under him, nor been assigned to any such claimant, but remains still in the alleged inventor, Fitzgerald. It seems to me, then, indisputable, that the legal title indispensable for the maintenance of this suit at law never was in the plaintiff, and that he could not maintain the action.

The second instance in which I hold the learned justice who tried this cause to have erred is that in which he instructed the jury as follows:-'That if Conner had not made his discovery public, but had used it simply for his own private purpose, and it had been finally forgotten or abandoned, such discovery and use would be no obstacle to the taking out of a patent by Fitzgerald, or those claiming under him, if he be an original, though not the first, inventor or discoverer of the improvement.' In considering this instruction of the learned judge, the first vice with which it appears to be affected is its violation of a rule thought to be universally applicable to instructions to juries in trials at law; and that rule is this, that instructions should always arise out of, and be limited to, the facts or the evidence in the cause to which the questions of law propounded from the bench should be strictly applicable; and that instructions which are general, abstract, or not springing from, and pertinent to, the facts of the case, are calculated to mislead the jury, and are therefore improper. Tried by this rule, the instruction of the learned judge, so far as it relates to Conner's not having made his discovery public, or having finally forgotten or abandoned it, is certainly irrelevant to, and unsustained by, any evidence in the record. So far is the existence of such testimony from being shown, the converse is proved and is justly inferable throughout; for although it does not appear that Conner advertised his invention in the public papers, or claimed a patent for it, it is admitted that he used this safe in an extensive business establishment, to which it is certain from the nature of his business the public had access; and it is not pretended that he made any effort at concealment of what he had invented, and the record is entirely destitute of evidence of an abandonment of his invention. As to the assumption of his having forgotten it, there is neither a fact, an inquiry, nor conjecture in the testimony pointing to such a conclusion. The instruction appears to me to be wholly gratuitous and irrelevant. But supposing this instruction to have been founded upon testimony introduced before the jury, let us consider for a moment its correctness as a rule of law applicable to this cause. This charge, it must be recollected, admits that Conner was, or might have been, the first inventor; and, notwithstanding, asserts that Fitzgerald, though posterior in time, might, upon the conditions and considerations assumed by the judge, become the owner of the right. Are these conditions warranted, either by the rules of public policy, or by the terms and language of legislative provisions on such subjects? It is said that patent privileges are allowed as incitements to inventions and improvements by which the public may be benefited. This position, that may be conceded in general, should not be made a means of preventing the great and public purposes its legitimate enforcement is calculated to secure. The admission of this principle leaves entirely open the inquiries, whether he is more the benefactor of the public who makes a useful improvement which he generously shares with his fellow-citizens, or he who studies some device which he denies to all, and limits by every means in his power to a lucrative monopoly; and still more, whether the latter shall be permitted to seize upon that which had already (as is here admitted) been given to the public, thereby to levy contributions, not only on the community at large, but upon him even who had been its generous benefactor. It was doubtless to prevent consequences like those here presented, that the priority and originality of inventions are so uniformly and explicitly insisted upon in all the legislation of Congress, as will presently be shown. The tendency of the learned judge's charge to mislead the jury, from its want of precision, and its failure to define any certain predicament upon which the action of the jury should be founded, is of itself an insuperable objection to that charge. Thus it is said, if Connor 'had not made his discovery public.' In what mode? it may be asked. What form of publicity did the learned judge intend the jury should require? It is shown that Conner used his safe publicly; that is, he concealed it from no one; and if any mode or kind of publication or concealment was requisite, either to establish or conclude the right of Conner, or to conclude common right (a delinquency in the nature of a forfeiture), surely that mode, if found either in any statute, or in the rules of the common law, ought to have been clearly laid down, so as to guard the rights of all. In the next place, it is said by the learned judge, that, if Conner had abandoned this improvement which the charge admits him to have invented, this would justify a patent to another who had not known of the improvement, although a subsequent inventor. I have always understood it to be indisputable law, that wherever an inventor abandons or surrenders an invention or improvement which he has certainly made, and neither claims and exclusive right in himself nor transfers it to another, the invention or improvement is given to the public; but by the charge in this case, such an abandonment transfers an exclusive right to one who, by the case supposed, is admitted not to be the first inventor. So, too, with respect to the hypothesis of the learned judge that the invention had, or might have, been forgotten. To this the same objections of vagueness and uncertainty, and the graver objection of injustice to the real inventor or to the public, are applicable. By whom and for what interval of time must this improvement have been forgotten, in order to transfer it from the originator thereof? For a term of years? And if so, for how long a term? But suppose he forgets it for his lifetime, shall his executor or his posterity, upon the exhibition of indisputable proofs of the invention, yea, the very machine itself, perfect in all its parts and in its operation, be cut off? This surely cannot be; but, at any rate, the jury should have been furnished with some rule or measure of obliviousness, if this was to be made the substantive cause of deprivation as to the original inventor, or the foundation of right and of exclusive right in one confessedly not the first inventor. An attempt has been made to compare the doctrine propounded by the court to what it might be thought is the law as applicable to the discovery, or rather recovery, of the processes employed in what have been called the lost arts. This illustration is in itself somewhat equivocal, and by no means satisfactory; for if that process could certainly be shown to be the same with one claimed by the modern inventor, his discovery could scarcely have the merit of originality, or be the foundation of exclusive right. But, in truth, the illustration attempted to be drawn from a revival of a lost art is not apposite to the present case. The term lost art is applicable peculiarly to certain monuments of antiquity still remaining in the world, the process of whose accomplishment has been lost for centuries, has been irretrievably swept from the earth, with every vestige of the archives or records of the nations with whom those arts existed, and the origin or even the identity of which process none can certainly establish. And if a means of producing the effect we see and have amongst us be discovered, and none can either by history or tradition refer to a similar or to the identical process, the inventor of that means may so far claim the merit of originality, though the work itself may have been produced possibly by the same means. But not one principle drawn from such a state of things can be applied to a recent proceeding, which counts from its origin scarcely a period of fifteen years. In fine, this ruling of the learned judge is regarded as being at war not less with the policy and objects than it is with the express language of all the legislation by Congress upon the subject of patent rights, which legislation has uniformly constituted priority of invention to be the foundation and the test of all such rights. Thus in the act of April 10th, 1790, the first patent law, (1 Stat. at L., 109,) it is declared by the first section, 'That upon the application of any person or persons, &c., setting forth that he, she, or they hath or have invented or discovered any useful art, &c., not before known or used,' &c.; and the sccond section of the same statute, requiring a specification of any invention or discovery, declares that it shall be so described 'as to distinguish it from all other things known or used.'

The act of February 21st, 1793, (1 Stat. at L., 318), provides, that when any citizen or citizens of the United States shall allege that he or they have invented any 'new and useful art, &c., not known or used before the application,' &c.

By the act of April 17th, 1800, (2 Stat. at L., 38,) which extends the privilege of patents to aliens, proof is required that the art, invention, or discovery hath not been known or used in that or any foreign country. It is true that this requisition has been so far relaxed as to admit of the patenting in this country inventions which had been invented and used abroad, but with respect to this country, the invention, &c., must still be original.

The act of July 4th, 1836, (5 Stat. at L., 117,) reorganizing the Patent-Office, the language of the sixth section is as follows: 'That any person or persons having discovered or invented any new and useful art, &c., not known or used by others before his or their discovery,' &c. The language and import of the laws here cited are too plain to require comment, and I think that the production of a single instance from the statute-book may safely be challenged by which the requisites above mentioned have been dispensed with. Every law, on the contrary, has emphatically demanded originality and priority as indispensable pre-requisites to patent privileges, and every aspirant to such privileges is expressly required to swear to these pre-requisites, as well as to establish them. These tests ordained by the laws are not only founded upon the true reason for the privileges conferred, but they are simple and comprehensible; whereas the innovations permitted by the ruling of the learned judge not only conflict with the true reason and foundation of patent privileges, but tend to an uncertainty and confusion which cannot but invite litigation and mischief. I think that the judgment of the Circuit Court should be reversed, and the cause remanded for a venire facias de novo.

Mr. Justice GRIER also dissented.