United States of America v. Motion Picture Patents Company and others (1914)

whether or not the patent 589168 applied to negatives. Judge Wallace said (I, 155, fol. 4) : The patent in suit pertains merely to that branch of the art which consists of the production of suitable negatives. And later on in the opinion he said (I, 162, fol 2) : He was not the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives. A comparison of the language used in the film patent reissue 12192 with the language used in the camera patent reissue 12037 conclusively establishes that the film reissue is a claim only on the negative, and that it does not apply to the positive print. If 12192 in fact applies to positive prints, as asserted by counsel for the defendants, why was the clause referring to positive prints expressly omitted from the Letters Patent 12192 but inserted in 12037. (It is to be remembered that these two patents are both reissues of No. 589168.) The fact is the words must have been omitted from 12192 for the express purpose of limiting the claim to the negative. Letters Patent 12192, after describing the manner in which the film is run through the camera and how photographs are taken therein, states (line 119 of letters patent, defendants' Exhibit 187, Vol. VI, p. 3326) : When the movement of the object being photographed has ceased or the desired number of photographs has been obtained, the apparatus is stopped. The film is suit