Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/723

708 FBDKBAL BEPOBTEB. �ducting wires of electric telegrapha which are intended to be placed underground. * * *" He further sajs : �"The eucasement of this wire with bitumen may also be effected by covering it with a filamentous material, which has been previously saturated with melted bitijraen, and then pressing the wire so covered through a heated die or orifice, so as to meit or soften the bitumen upon the filamentous material, and press the whole of the coating against the wire in such a way as to cause it to form one compact, continuons covering of the wire, and thus insure its insulation. " �The same general process of compression is found in Bandorein's British patent No. 933, of 1857, for electric conductors. The speci- fication says: �" The wire is passed through a bath of hot bitumen, and has the superfluoua matter removed by passing through suitable dies or parts to scrape and smooth its surface, and render it of uniform thickness. The first and second ribbons [which arestrips of material to be wound on the wire] are also passed through bitu minons or other suitable matter to render them more impervious to elec- tricity. The coated and lapped wire is passed through suitable dies to re- move superflTious matter, to smooth down the lapping of the ribbons, and to eompress and cause their proper adhesion. " �It thus appears that the proeess of compression had been ns^d, for some years before the date of Olmsted's patent, in the manufacture of electric telegraph wire previously covered with cloth and then coated with bitumen or fatty substances, and having been so used, there is no longer patentability in compressing the paraffine covering of a wire coated with fibrous material. �The pat«nted proeess "was simply the application by the patentee of an old proeess to a new subject, without any ezercise of the inven- tive faculty, and without the development of any idea which can be deemed new or original in the sense of the patent law." Brown v. Piper, 91 U. S. 37. The patentee took the proeess of Dundonald and of Bandorein, which they had applied to bitumen, and applied it to the wax covering which was in common use, and had been found to be superior for certain classes of wire to any insulated covering which had been previously used or suggested. The old proeess waa applied to the new use without substantial alteration or change. The proeess patent not stating a patentable invention, the product patent is in no better condition. �The bill is ■ dismissed. ��� �