entered, as alleged, with his consent in the original patent, and that this was done with the avowed intention of avoiding an interference with Chesterman, who was a pending applicant before the office at that time. To withdraw the disclaimer upon reissue is not only contrary to law, according to argument of counsel, because it was not made through inadvertence, accident, or mistake in the first instance, but also, since Chesterman was induced to act in the belief that the disclaimer was of permanent binding force then, that Daniels should be prevented from going behind his voluntary undertaking to the serious injury of an innocent person.

Several affidavits are filed in support of the motion, and the arguments based thereon have been carefully considered.

Had the objection to the legal right of Daniels under the particular circumstances to omit the disclaimer from his reissue been made at an earlier stage of the case, it would have been entertained with much more patience. The affidavits of McHenry, Miller, and of Chesterman himself, all state, in effect, that they were fully advised of the existence of a disclaimer in the original Daniels patent, and it was their reliance upon its continued binding force which induced them to embark capital in manufacturing the contested device. If, then, this be so, and I take their own affidavits upon the point, it is a little curious that no motion was made by them to dissolve the interference at the outset,. and when they first discovered the absence of the disclaimer from the reissue application. Then the legality of the action in this regard by Daniels could have been fully reviewed without detriment, and as a question vital to the very continuance of the declared interference. Failing to do this, they must be held to have admitted, by implication, Daniels's legal right to withdraw the disclaimer, precisely as he has done, and to have joined issue with him on the simple question of fact, viz, who is the prior inventor? The only mitigating fact is, that they were not fully advised of the circumstances attendant upon the original entry of the disclaimer, and which, they have since discovered, are of such nature as to work a virtual estoppel, in their point of view, against Daniels. Now, aside from the question as to whether they were not put upon inquiry at the start to learn of this matter by the mere omission of the disclaimer, and whether, as a matter of law, the action which an innocent party is induced to take as one of the elements of an estoppel can apply to Chesterman, who proceeded on no other representation of Daniels than the published disclaimer-a disclaimer which the courts had ruled could be omitted on reissue; and whose views in this regard must have been constructively known, at least-waiving, I say, both the question of negligence and of the sufficiency of the deceptive representations, we are led to inquire what will be the effect of the additional testimony even if fully established.

The material allegation is that of Examiner Wilber, who testifies to Daniels exclaiming, when shown the date of filing of Chesterman's ap

plication, "O, well, I can do nothing with him," which we are asked to construe as a direct admission of his (Daniels's) subsequent inventorship.

In the case of Laidley v. James (MS. opinions, Supreme Court District of Columbia, April 13, 1865), Justice Merrick says:

An individual who has really discovered anything patentable may be told by others that his invention has been long known, and upon investigation he may ascertain that the knowledge of it is really subsequent to his own development of the idea. Now, if you credit his solemn admission under oath that it is old, why shall you not equally credit his solemn oath that the admission was inadvertent or a mistake? You have himself testifying against himself; and when, in addition thereto, he adduces a witness to prove that anterior to his first application he did, in fact, produce the invention, and then claims it as his own, the last oath must prevail to countervail the effect of the first.

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Nothing should pass to the public or to his adversary through his mistake or inadvertency or ignorance by force of any language used in his specification, description, or claim which was within the scope of the invention he actually made anterior to his first application.

It is fully established that Daniels completed the invention some eight or ten months before the date which it is sought to fix upon him, and long previous to its reduction by his adversary, Chesterman. Several witnesses substantiate these facts, so that under the circumstances the disclaimer is obviously an inadvertence, which he may remedy with out detriment.

The motion in behalf of Chesterman is denied.

EX PARTE BURGE.

Decided December 17, 1877.

(O. G., vol. xiii, p. 498.)

1. The party against whom final interference judgment was rendered, and who accepted a limited patent, cannot set up a claim, on reissue, to subiect-matter awarded his adversary under the judgment.

2. An office judgment unexcepted to is conclusively binding upon the parties touching every matter which it decided. Particularly is this true where the parties by their subsequent acts acquiesce in its findings.

APPEAL from the decision of the Principal Examiner in the matter or the application of John Burge for the reissue of letters patent No. 194,506, granted August 21, 1877, for "Improvement in Time-Locks," filed October 4, 1877.

The appeal involves the question of the admissibility of certain clauses of claim presented in the reissue application. The Examiner criticises

the claims also for defectiveness in form; but as there is no difficulty in understanding exactly what the applicant designs to cover by them, the consideration of this objection may be deferred to that of the other point involved, which is of much more importance.

The Examiner holds that certain of the claims come within the finding of the Commissioner in Sargent vs. Burge (11 Official Gazette, 1055); and that, as a consequence, since Burge was the defeated party in that cause, he is precluded from again setting up title within the office to any subject-matter which was properly determined therein. So far as he is concerned, the questions which then lawfully passed into judgment have become res judicata, and their full force can be neither questioned nor evaded.

It becomes important, in the first place, to ascertain exactly what was decided in the Sargent and Burge interference; and with that fixed clearly in mind, we will be able to judge how far the objection of the Examiner to the claim is well founded.

Attorney for the present applicant, Burge, has dwelt with much stress upon the rules of law to be followed in construing the Commissioner's opinion in that cause, and has urged in effect that the first matter presented for his determination was whether the issue as declared upon was a proper one; that, having decided this question in the negative, to proceed to consider the question of priority of invention upon the evidence taken, or, indeed, to discuss any other matter, was premature, and should, in proper practice, have been delayed until a new issue had been declared and approved.

Generally speaking, I do not think there can be any question as to the propriety of this practice; but the applicant would be as little benefitted by the rigid adherence thereto on the part of the Commissioner as he deems himself to have been by the extrajudicial act of the Commissioner in declaring a feigned issue, and proceeding to determine the question of priority of invention upon it. For, if the judgment adverse to the correctness of the issue stated necessarily operated to place all other matters in abeyance until it was correctly settled and defined, then the announcement upon which applicant so confidently relies, that there could be no interference between the inventions of Sargent and Burge, was as much a dictum as anything touching priority of invention, patentability, &c.

Regarded, then, in the strict light of applicant, the decision gave him no more immunity from possible future interference with Sargent than it awarded priority in the latter's favor. To my mind, however, the opinion in that case had much broader scope than is admitted for it With the case regularly before him, and arguments addressed by common consent of counsel to both the formality of the issue and to priority of invention, the Commissioner, in passing upon both of these matters, departed in no essential from a course of procedure tacitly approved by counsel at the hearing.

The Commissioner, in proceeding to try the question of priority on a new issue declared by himself, was strictly within the letter of the law, and administered substantial justice, as seemed right to him according to the voluminous evidence and exhaustive arguments that had been presented. Instead of remanding the matter to the Primary Examiner for the purpose of redefining the issue, he took cognizance of the interfering matter in the first instance; and having ascertained the nature and scope of the conflicting subject-matter, adjudged priority in accordance with the law and with the evidence adduced.

If either side was dissatisfied with the course he adopted, if it was desirable to obtain new and material evidence bearing upon the issue as redefined, the saving remedy lay in a motion to rehear or to amend judgment. No such motion was ever made. On the contrary, Burge withdrew the claims upon which the controversy turned, and accepted from the Office a limited patent, and by this course of action conclusively acquiesced in the lawfulness and propriety of the course adopted by the Commissioner. While as to third parties not in privity with the principals the decision in Sargent v. Burge may have settled nothing definitely other than that the issue declared upon was defective, yet as to the principals themselves, and to all parties that may hereafter claim under them, that decision, unexcepted to, is, by the very act of the parties, conclusive upon them within the Office with relation to every subject which is discussed, and cannot now be questioned or assailed.

The claims upon which appeal is taken read as follows:

1. A time-lock for application on a safe or vault door provided with a notched dog or obstruction which is integral with the lock, but is isolated from the time mechanism, and stationary, except during the brief periods of movement for locking or unlocking, substantially as set forth; said dog being so arranged as to be automatically oscillated on its pivot for unlocking or undogging the bolt-work at a time indicated by the time mechanism, but by an agency other than the time mechanism.

2. The combination, in a time-lock, for application on a safe or vault door, of (1) a wheel rotated by the time mechanism for unlocking, but capable of being rotated independently of the time mechanism, in order to set it for determining the time that shall elapse befor the unlocking takes place; (2) a fixed pin or stud projecting from said wheel; (3) a tripping-lever, one arm of which stands within the circular path of said pin to be struck by it to move the lever on its pivot and cause its other arm to effect tripping or releasing, so as to permit unlocking by a separate agency; (4) a spring acting upon the tripping-lever and tending to keep its upper arm in the circular path of the fixed pin.

These claims are clearly broad enough to construe with the invention of Sargent; and as between himself and Burge the property therein has been adjudged to be his, Burge cannot be permitted to present the new claims.

The action of the Examiner in requiring that they be stricken out is affirmed.

EX PARTE MASON.

Decided December 27, 1877.

(O. G., vol. xiii, p. 324.)

A lathe-chuck or former having a screw-thread on its face being old, for spinning up screw-caps from ductile metal, no invention is necessary to round the edge of the thread so as to prevent the cutting of the metal cap along the lineof the spiral. 2. To taper a lathe-chuck and to make it with a screw-thread on its face are both wellknown constructions in the art of spinning metal. It is without patentable merit to unite both these features in the same chuck, when no joint modified effect is obtained, but a simple aggregation of their individual functions.

APPEAL from the decision of the Board of Examiners-in-Chief in the matter of the application for the reissue of letters patent No. 19,786, granted to John L. Mason, March 30, 1858, for an "Improvement in Lathe Chucks," extended in 1872.

At the time the extension of this patent was granted the single claim which it contained, and upon which all opposition turned, read as follows:

The chuck herein described for spinning screw-caps, &c., having a flange, a rounded thread, and a rounded groove, the groove and thread vanishing gradually at the flange, substantially as described.

From the nature of the case, it is quite apparent that the Commissioner could have considered and pronounced upon the patentability of no subject-matter except what was set forth in the claim.

In the reissue which it is now sought to obtain the old claim has been abandoned, and among the new ones presented are the following, which are clearly of much broader scope:

1. The screw chuck or former for spinning caps of thin sheet metal provided with a rounded thread, as and for the purpose set forth.

4. A screw chuck or former made tapering towards its outer end, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.

In the English patent No. 14,059 (old law), granted to F. J. Beltzung in 1852, the method of spinning up soft-metal caps or covers with internal screw-threads from a suitable blank is very satisfactorily described. In this connection it is well to remember that the art of spinning up articles of ductile metal around a former was a well-established one at that time. With these facts clearly in mind, we find that Mr. Mason went no further in his alleged invention than to round the edges of the screwthread on the chuck, instead of leaving them with a sharp cutting-edge, as in the patent of Beltzung.

From the nature of the material with which the mechanic worked in spinning up caps according to the Beltzung specification, it is not sur