Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/528

SAYLE8 V. LOUISVILLE CITT B. CO. 513 �tion in eucii actions. The Revised Statutes, § 721, using fhe lan- guage of the act of 1789, provides that "the laws of the several States, except where the constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply." �The state law is, therefore, not the rule of decision where an act of congress has provided the rule. Whether, if there were no national statute of limitation applicable to the case, the state statute would be a bar, does not arise and is not decided. The fifty-fifth section of the act of congress, approved July 8, 1870, provides that "all actions shall be brought during the term for which the letters patent shall be granted or extended, or within six years after the expiration thereof." This was omitted from the Revised Statutes, and is therefore re- pealed ; but section 5599 provides that "all acts of limitation * * * embraced in said revision and covered by said repeal shall not be afiected thereby, but all suits * • * for causes arising, or acts done or committed, prior to said repeal may be commenced and prosecuted within the same time as if said repeal had not been made." �This suit was brought June 18, 1879, within the six years after the expiration of the extended term, and plaintifs counsel insist that when the term was extended the extension had the same effect in law as though the patent had been originally granted for 21 years, and the plaintiff may recover for the infringement of the patent during the original term as well as the extended term. He reads the act as if the words had been, "all actions shall be brought during the term of the monopoly, or within six years after the expiration thereof." If, however, the statute had been intended to mean that there is in law but one term — whether that term should be 14 or 21 years — it would have been only necessary to omit the words "or extended," and then the act would have read, "all actions shall be brought dur- ing the term for which the letters patent shall be granted, or within six years after the expiration thereof." �The subsequent section, which provided that when an extension was granted that "thereupon the said patent shall have the same effect in law as though it had been originally granted for 21 years," would, perhaps, have applied, and made an extended term a part of the original term, and might, under this theory, been construed as T.9,no.8— sa ��� �