Opinion of the Court.

the free passage of the water while the valve is moving in one direction, and to prevent such passage while the valve is moving in the other direction, is due to the flexibility of the leather, and to the pressure of the water on its different sides alternately, and to its position with reference to the wall of the chamber, and is the same as in the old central valve of a pumpplunger which was furnished with a cup-leather. The effect resulting from allowing the water, which cannot return through the passage by which it entered, to escape by a small orifice. and gradually, and thus cause a gradual movement in a valve attached to the central stem, is due to the small orifice. All that Carr did, if anything, was to add his form of orifice to the valve and cup-leather of the pump-plunger. But the idea of having openings extending from one side to the other of a bucket, and thus regulating the closing of a water-valve by the slow escape of the water from the upper side of the bucket, through such openings, was fully exhibited in the apparatus of Hulme. Claim three of Carr's reissue speaks of the cup-leather as "moving freely in one direction and closing against the containing cylinder in the other direction." This action existed in the cup-leather of the old pump-plunger. The claim also says, "the leakage of water in said cylinder allowing the movement of said cup-leather, as set forth." This means, that the greater or less extent of the leakage allows a faster or slower movement of the cup-leather, and a faster or slower closing of the valve. The claim involves, therefore, as an element in it, the means of leakage set forth. It says that the use of the cupleather is "for controlling the motion of said valve in closing gradually, substantially as specified." But it is the gradual escape of the water through the small orifice which controls the motion of the valve. The cup-leather does not control such motion. The only action of the cup-leather is the same which it had in the old pump-plunger-to hold up a column of water and act as a packing to prevent the return passage of the water. In this condition of things, it would seem that the only point of invention, if it could be dignified by that name, was the special means of leakage shown by Carr, of having a screw through the cap, with part of the screw filed away; and

Opinion of the Court.

which is not used by the defendants, who use the same means of leakage as Hulme did.

The provision of the Constitution, Art. 1, sec. 8, subdivision 8, is, that the Congress shall have power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The beneficiary must be an inventor and he must have made a discovery. The statute has always carried out this idea. Under the Act of July 4, 1836, 5 Stat. 119, § 6, in force when these patents were granted, the patentee was required to be a person who had "discovered or invented a "new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter," or a "new and useful improvement in any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter." In the Act of July 8, 1870, 16 Stat. 201, § 24, the patentee was required to be a person who had "invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;" and that language is reproduced in § 4886 Rev. Stat. So, it is not enough that a thing shall be new, in the sense that in the shape or form in which it is produced it shall not have been before known, and that it shall be useful, but it must, under the Constitution and the statute, amount to an invention or discovery.

To refer only to some more recent cases, adjudged since these suits were decided below, this principle was applied in Vinton v. Hamilton, 104 U. S. 485, where, a cupola-furnace being old, and a cinder-notch being old, and the use of a cinder-notch to draw off cinders from a blast-furnace being old, and the cindernotch, in drawing off the cinder from a cupola-furnace, performing the same function as in the blast-furnace, it was held that the application of the cinder-notch to the cupola-furnace would occur to any practical man, and that there was nothing patentable in such application.

In Hall v. Macneale, 107 U. S. 90, a cored conical bolt, in a safe, with a screw-thread on it, having existed before, and also a solid conical bolt, it was held to be no invention to add the screw-thread to the solid conical bolt.

Opinion of the Court.

In Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U. S. 192, 200, it was said, that it is not the object of the patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator, in the ordinary progress of manufactures; and this doctrine was applied in Slawson v. Grand Street Railroad Co., 107 U. S. 649; in King v. Gallun, 109 U. S. 99; in Double-Pointed Tack Co. v. Two Rivers Manufacturing Co., 109 U. S. 117; in Estey v. Burdett, 109 U. S. 633; in Bussey v. Excelsior Manufacturing Co., 110 U. S. 131; in Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Locomotive Truck Co., 110 U. S. 490; in Phillips v. Detroit, 111 U. S. 604; in Morris v. McMillin, 112 U. S. 244; and in Hollister v. Benedict Manufacturing Co., 113 U. S. 59.

In the case last cited the thing claimed was new, in the sense that it had not been anticipated by any previous invention, and it was shown to have superior utility, yet it was held not to be such an improvement as was entitled to be regarded, in the patent law, as an invention. The claim was, "A stamp, the body of which is made of paper or other material, and having a removable slip of metal or other material, displaying thereon a serial number, or other specific identifying mark, corresponding with a similar mark upon the stub, and so attached that the removal of such slip must mutilate or destroy the stamp." The part designed to become a stub when the stamp proper was separated therefrom, and displaying a serial number, was well known; and so was the constituent part of the stamp proper designed to be permanently attached to a barrel. The third element, namely, a constituent part of the stamp proper displaying the same identifying serial number as the stub, which part, after the stamp proper had been affixed to the barrel, bore such relation to the permanent part, that it could be removed therefrom so as to retain its own integrity, but to mutilate, and thereby cancel, the stamp, by its removal, was not new, so far as the contents of such constituent part were identical with those on the stub. But the question turned on that feature of the third element whereby a removable part of the stamp proper, the contents of which identified the stamp with the stub after the stamp had been attached, could be so re

Opinion of the Court.

moved as to retain its own integrity, but mutilate, and thereby cancel, the stamp, by its removal. This was held not to be a patentable invention; and "not to spring from that intuitive faculty of the mind put forth in the search for new results, or new methods, creating what had not before existed, or bringing to light what lay hidden from vision;" but to be only "the display of the expected skill of the calling," and involving "only the exercise of the ordinary faculties of reasoning upon the materials supplied by a special knowledge, and the facility of manipulation which results from its habitual and intelligent practice;" and to be "in no sense the creative work of that inventive faculty which it is the purpose of the Constitution and patent laws to encourage and reward."

On these principles claim 3 of the Carr reissue must, in view of the state of the art, either be held not to involve a patentable invention, or if it does, not to have been infringed.

The specification of the Bartholomew patent says: "The nature of my invention consists' in providing for water-closets a cistern, or drip- or leak-chamber, arranged upon the top of or over the trunk of a closet, and placing a supply-cock within or above said drip-box or cistern, so that any waste or leak or drip from the cock shall be conducted into the trunk, so as to insure the keeping of the floor dry. Fig. 1 is a prospective view of a pan-closet, showing my drip-box arranged upon the top plate of the closet, and the cock for supplying water to the same secured to the closet within the drip-box. The general form of the 'closet is such as is in common use. Upon the cover, R, I cast a box, inclosure or cistern, E, about one inch high (more or less), and broad enough to admit of placing the 'A' cock (I use a valve-cock) within the cistern, and (where it is practicable) so as also to receive the drip that may escape from the joint at the arm of the basin, called the 'putty-joint.' I screw the cock into the cover of the closet, and make a hole within the drip-box, or in the bottom of the cock, to admit the leak to fall into the trunk, P, and not on to the floor." The first claim of the patent, which is the only one alleged to have been infringed, reads thus: "First. I claim the use of a drip-box or leak-chamber, arranged above the closet,

Opinion of the Court.

and below and around the supply-cock, substantially as described."

The defendants' structure has a trunk, and a supply cock, and a drip-box arranged below and around the supply cock, but the drip-box is cast on the side of the trunk, near the top, but below it, and not on top of it. The drip goes into the dripbox, and thence into the trunk and the soil-pipe. The following devices are shown to have been old: A drip-cup or dripbox; a pipe to convey away drippings, in machinery, from a drip-box arranged in connection with a cock; a drip-cup applied to the valve of a water-closet, the leakage from the valve falling into a saucer, and thence finding its way, through a hole, into the inside of the trunk; a valve on the floor at the foot of the trunk; a valve attached to the trunk and below its top; a valve above its top; a valve with a drip-pan conducting the drip into the soil-pipe at the foot of the trunk; a valve on top of the trunk, and a provision, by means of a hollow arm, to conduct the drip into the trunk: In view of this state of the art, the claim must be limited, as defined by its language and that of the specification, to a drip-box "arranged upon the top of or over the trunk”-“arranged upon the top-plate”—cast "upon the cover"-" arranged above the closet." The limitation imposed by the patentee must be presumed to have been made with good reason, and, even if there was anything patentable in the claim as it reads, it cannot, in view of the state of the art, be extended to cover any structure except one which has a drip-box arranged above or on top of the closet, and, therefore, has not been infringed.

From these considerations it results, that

The decrees in the Missouri suits must be affirmed; and those in the New York suits must be reversed, with directions to dismiss the bills, with costs.