6456. PATENTS, Scope of.—
[You say]
that your patent is for your improvement in the
manufacture of flour by the application of certain
principles, and of such machinery as will
carry those principles into operation, whether
of the improved elevator, improved hopper-boy,
or (without being confined to them) of any
machinery known and free to the public. I can
conceive how a machine may improve the manufacture
of flour; but not how a principle abstracted
from any machine can do it. It must
then be the machine, and the principle of that
machine, which is secured to you by your
patent. Recurring now to the words of your
definition, do they mean that, while all are free
to use the old string of buckets, and Archimedes's
screw for the purposes to which they
have been formerly applied, you alone have
the exclusive right to apply them to the manufacture
of flour? that no one has a right to
apply his old machines to all the purposes of
which they are susceptible? that every one, for
instance, who can apply the hoe, the spade, or
the axe, to any purpose to which they have not
been before applied, may have a patent for the
exclusive right to that application? and May
exclude all others, under penalties, from so
using their hoe, spade, or axe? If this be the
meaning, [it is] my opinion that the Legislature
never meant by the patent law to sweep away
so extensively the rights of their constituents,
[and thus] to environ everything they touch
with snares.—
To Oliver Evans. Washington ed. vi, 297.
(M.
1814)
