Opinion of the Court. reply that that was not enough; that over and above the mint, anise and cumin of the law lay the weightier obligation of justice toward all; that a binding duty dehors the letter of the law was violated. The appellees rejoin that no such obligation existed. So the Court of Appeals held. Ought the fact that the terms of the statute and the rules were complied with to close the inquiry? Does the law know no obligations respecting statutory proceedings except statu tory obligations? Is all that a man can make out of the gov ernment, or out of the people through the government, lawful game so long as he keeps the letter of the law? These questions reach far beyond the confines of this case. How to keep the letter of the law is one of the fine arts of our time. The promoters of trusts, combines and all the countless schemes organized for the plunder of society are adepts in that art. Such an issue ought not to be decided against the people until all precedents and analogies have been searched and all fair reasonings tested. The existence of a duty once established, all else follows easily. The measure of the diligence which it requires grows out of the circumstances. The importance of the interests involved, and the gravity of the consequences likely to occur from a neglect of it, enter into it, as in every case where diligence is an element of duty towards others. Mr. James McNaught and Mr. Joseph D. Redding by leave of court filed a brief on behalf of the Standard Telephone Company in support of the appellants. Mr. Joseph H. Choate and Mr. Frederick P. Fish for appellees. Mr. James J. Storrow, Mr. W. W. Swan and Mr. W. K. Richardson were on their brief. MR. JUSTICE BREWER, after making the above statement, delivered the opinion of the court. This is a suit by the United States to set aside a patent for an invention as wrongfully issued. It is, we believe, the first Opinion of the Court. case in this court in which upon proofs such an application has been presented. The right of the United States to maintain such a suit was affirmed in United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 128 U. S. 315. The question now is whether upon the facts disclosed in this record the relief prayed for ought to be awarded. It becomes, therefore, a matter of moment to determine under what circumstances and upon what conditions the United States are entitled to have a patent issued in due course of law set aside and cancelled. Many cases have come to this court, in which patents for lands have been sought to be set aside, and the rules controlling such suits have been frequently considered. Such decisions will naturally throw light upon the question here presented, though before adverting to them it may be well to note the difference between patents for land and patents for inventions. While the same term is used, the same grantor is in each, and although each vests in the patentee certain rights, yet they are not in all things alike. The patent for land is a conveyance to an individual of that which is the absolute property of the Government and to which, but for the conveyance, the individual would have no right or title. It is a transfer of tangible property; of property in existence before the right is conveyed; of property which the Government has the full right to dispose of as it sees fit, and may retain to itself or convey to one individual or another; and it creates a title which lasts for all time. On the other hand, the patent for an invention is not a conveyance of something which the Government owns. It does not convey that which, but for the conveyance, the Government could use and dispose of as it sees fit, and to which no one save the Government has any right or title except for the conveyance. But for the patent the thing patented is open to the use of any one. Were it not for this patent any one would have the right to manufacture and use the Berliner transmitter. It was not something which belonged to the Government before Berliner invented it. It was open to the manufacture and use of any one, and any one who knew how could contrive, manufacture and use the instrument. It conveyed to Berliner, so far as Opinion of the Court. respects rights in the instrument itself, nothing that he did. not have theretofore. The only effect of it was to restrain others from manufacturing and using that which he invented. After his invention he could have kept the discovery secret to himself. He need not have disclosed it to any one. But in order to induce him to make that invention public, to give all a share in the benefits resulting from such an invention, Congress, by its legislation, made in pursuance of the Constitution, has guaranteed to him an exclusive right to it for a limited time; and the purpose of the patent is to protect him in this monopoly, not to give him a use which, save for the patent, he did not have before, but only to separate to him an exclusive use. The Government parted with nothing by the patent. It lost no property. Its possessions were not diminished. The patentee, so far as a personal use is concerned, received nothing which he did not have without the patent, and the monopoly which he did receive is only for a few years. So the Government may well insist that it has higher rights in a suit to set aside a patent for land than it has in a suit to set aside a patent for an invention. There are weightier reasons why the Government should not be permanently deprived of its property through fraudulent representations or other wrongful means, than there are for questioning the validity of a temporary monopoly or depriving an individual of the exclusive use for a limited time of that whose actual use he claims to have made possible, and which, after such time, will be open and free to all. Bearing in mind this distinction, let us inquire upon what conditions the Government may maintain a suit to set aside a patent for land. These suits may be conveniently grouped in three classes: First, where, the Government being the only party interested, the patent is charged to have been obtained by fraud in representations or conduct. Second, where the land by appropriate reservation is not subject to patent, but is, nevertheless, erroneously patented. Third, where the land, though subject to patent in the ordinary administration of the land office, is patented to the wrong person either through fraud or by reason of mistake or inadvertence. In the first class are the fol Opinion of the Court. lowing cases: United States v. Hughes, 11 How. 552; United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S. 61; United States v. Atherton, 102 U. S. 372; Moffat v. United States, 112 U. S. 24; United States v. Minor, 114 U. S. 233; Maxwell Land Grant case, - 121 U. S. 325; Colorado Coal & Iron Co. v. United States, 123 U. S. 307; United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co., 125 U. S. 273; United States v. Iron Silver Mining Co., 128 U. S. 673; United States v. Hancock, 133 U. S. 193; United States v. Trinidad Coal & Coking Co., 137 U. S. 160; United States v. Budd, 144 U. S. 154; San Pedro &c. Co. v. United States, 146 U. S. 120; — In the second are these: United States v. Stone, 2 Wall. 525; Leavenworth, Lawrence &c. Railroad v. United States, 92 U. S. 733; McLaughlin v. United States, 107 U. S. 526; Western Pacific Railroad v. United States, 108 U. S. 510; Mullan v. United States, 118 U. S. 271;- and in the third the following: Hughes v. United States, 4 Wall. 232; United States v. Beebe, 127 U. S. 338; United States v. Marshall Mining Co., 129 U. S. 579; United States v. Missouri, Kansas &c. Railway, 141 U. S. 358; United States v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 146 U. S. 570. The second and third classes are not paralleled in this case, for it is not claimed that there was no invention, or that the patent issued to the wrong party. The decisions in those classes need not be considered. The first class comprises all cases in which the land, though subject to patent and therefore within the jurisdiction of the land department, was charged to have been patented in consequence of fraudulent representations or conduct on the part of the patentee. The representations may have been as to the matter of right or the matter of quantity. The patentee may have been entitled to no land, or to less, or a different tract than that patented. In any event, fraud was the basis of the relief sought, and as fraud actual or constructive in the issue of the patent is the burden of this suit, we will quote from the opinions in some of these cases. In the Maxwell Land Grant case, Mr. Justice Miller, delivering the opinion of the court, said (p. 381): · "We take the general doctrine to be, that when in a court of equity it is proposed to set aside, to annul or to correct a Opinion of the Court. written instrument for fraud or mistake in the execution of the instrument itself, the testimony on which this is done must be clear, unequivocal and convincing, and that it cannot be done upon a bare preponderance of evidence which leaves the issue in doubt. If the proposition, as thus laid down in the cases cited, is sound in regard to the ordinary contracts of private individuals, how much more should it be observed where the attempt is to annul the grants, the patents and other solemn evidences of title emanating from the Government of the United States under its official seal. In this class of cases, the respect due to a patent, the presumption that all the preceding steps required by the law had been observed before its issue, the immense importance and necessity of the stability of titles dependent upon these official instruments, demand that the effort to set them aside, to annul them, or to correct mistakes in them should only be successful when the allegations on which this is attempted are clearly stated and fully sustained by proof. It is not to be admitted that the titles by which so much property in this country and so many rights are held, purporting to emanate from the authoritative action of the officers of the Government, and, as in this case, under the seal and signature of the President of the United States himself, shall be dependent upon the hazard of successful resistance to the whims and caprices of every person who chooses to attack them in a court of justice; but it should be well understood that only that class of evidence which commands respect, and that amount of it which produces conviction, shall make such an attempt successful." In Colorado Coal Co. v. United States, Mr. Justice Matthews, after quoting part of the foregoing, adds (p. 317): "It thus appears that the title of the defendants rests upon the strongest presumptions of fact, which, although they may be rebutted, nevertheless can be overthrown only by full proofs to the contrary, clear, convincing and unambiguous. The burden of producing these proofs and establishing the conclusion to which they are directed rests upon the Government. Neither is it relieved of this obligation by the negative nature of the proposition it is bound to establish. It is, VOL. CLXVII-16 |