Moving Picture News (Jan-Jun 1913)

20 THE MOVING PICTURE NEWS MIATT-PATENTS DEPARTMENT Recent Inventions, Letters Patent, Trade-Marks, Designs, Copyrights, Etc., Relating to the Art, Digested and Reported Exclusively for the Moving Picture News by Geo. Wm. Miatt, Patent Lawyer and Expert, Temple Court, cor. of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York City The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in the "Sanatogen" case, noted herein week before last, is of such importance as a leading case, especially to those interested in the Cinematographic Art, that we deem it expedient to "file" herewith a string of excerpts giving the gist of the text, for the convenience of readers of the News. "The right to make, use and sell an invented article is not derived from the patent law. This right existed before and without the passage of the law and was always the right of an inventor. The act secured to the inventor the exclusive right to make, use and vend the thing patented, and consequently to prevent others from exercising like privileges without the consent of the patentee. It was passed for the purpose of encouraging useful invention and promoting new and useful improvements by the protection and stimulation thereby given to inventive genius, and was intended to secure to the public, after the lapse of the exclusive privileges granted, the benefit of such inventions and improvements. Yet while this principle is generally recognized, care should be taken not to extend by judicial construction the rights and privileges which it was the purpose of Congress to bestow. The question therefore now before this court for judicial determination is : May a patentee by notice limit the price at which future retail sales of the patented article may be made, such article being in the hands of a retailer by purchase from a jobber who has paid to the agent of the patentee the full price asked for the article sold? The question has not been determined in any previous case in this court, so far as we are aware. It was dealt with under the copyright statute, however, in the case of Bobbs-Merrill Company vs. Straus. It was there held that the statute, in securing to the holder of the copyright the sole right to vend copies of the book, conferred a privilege which, when the book was sold, was exercised by the holder, and that the right secured by the statute was thereby exhausted. The sale of a patented article is not essentially different from the sale of a book. In each case to vend is to part with the thing for a consideration. The jobber from whom the appellee purchased had previously bought, at a price which must be deemed to have been satisfactory, the packages of Sanatogen afterward sold to the appellee. The patentee had no interest in the proceeds of the subsequent sales, no right to any royalty thereon or to participation in the profits thereof. There was no transfer of a limited right to use this invention, and to call the sale a license to use is a mere play upon words. Upon such facts as are now presented we think the right to vend secured in the patent statute is not distinguishable from the right of vending given in the copyright act. In both instances it was the intention of Congress to secure an exclusive right to sell, and there is no grant of a privilege to keep up prices and prevent competition by notices restricting the price at which the article may be resold. This being so, the case is brought within that line of cases in which this court from the beginning has held that a patentee who has parted with a patented machine by passing title to a purchaser has placed the article beyond the limits of the monopoly secured by the patent act. means reveals clearly internal organisms and mysteries heretofore beyond our ken. Thus advancement in one branch of science is dependent upon and stimulated by collateral evolution in other lines, as has been clearly demonstrated for instance in the development of the art of Cinematography. The objects of the invention of Alexander Ferdinand Victor, of Davenport, Iowa, as set forth in Patent No. 1,062,622 are to support all of the parts of a stereopticon concentric to the focal axis upon one base; to provide for the adjustments of all of said parts in order to properly project the pictures on the screen without disturbing the focal alinement thereof ; to accomplish all of these adjustments easily and conveniently, and to provide a light which will always be in alinement with the focal axis, which will always be exposed to the view of the operator and readily manipulated by him, and which has a casing that allows for the escape of the heat generated thereby and affords a protection to the operator. The accompanying figure, which is one of ten, represents a central vertical sectional elevation of the device and gives a pretty clear idea of the construction and arrangement of parts, comprising projecting lens, a slide holder and condensing lenses, a casing inclosing said holder and condensing lenses, a rear end for said casing that is supported by and is telescopically adjustable into and out of the same, insulated carriers having suitable bores mounted in said rear end on either side of the center thereof, carbon electrodes mounted in said carriers, means that press laterally against said electrodes and retain them in their adjusted positions within the bores of said carriers, said bores having their axes arranged at an angle and intersecting at the focal axis of said lenses, said electrodes being adjustable longitudinally and rotatably in said bores, and other features claimed specifically in twenty-seven claims, and described in a specification of 650 folios. Are two affirmatives equal to a negative? It would seem so in the case of Yess vs. Yess, 99 Northwestern Reporter. Another aid in reading the book of Nature. Minute X-ray photographs of the internal structure of diatomacse and other infinitesimal specimens, have been obtained by M. Perre Goby by placing the objects directly upon a photographic plate and allowing a perfectly vertical beam of the rays to fall from a bulb above, through a special tube so as to concentrate the rays on the subject. By this means he has succeeded in obtaining very minute photographs disclosing the internal structures of animalcula, and the enlargement of these views by a well-known Apropos to the decision of the Court of Appeals in re. Karback, noted last week, in which the issue was the old one of invention as distinguished from the use of obvious expedients or the exercise of mere mechanical skill, and ruling that all doubts in such respect should be construed in favor of the inventor, instead of against him as heretofore, it must be understood that so-called mechanical expedients or equivlents which seem obvious enough after utilization are not always primarily apparent to either the inventor or skilled artisan. Not so many years ago Edison regretted exceedingly