Opinion of the Court.

The Stokes patent was for an improvement in making a stud fastening known as Thomson's unbreakable busk fastening, and whereby, instead of fastening the parts of the stud together by rivets, the entire busk was made out of one piece of metal, by striking up or raising the stud out of a strip of malleable sheet metal. The structure thus produced is a solid rivet-like and flat head, intended to resist a great strain, and evidently not designed to be used as a collar button where a well-defined round head, adapted to be used where there is no strain, is necessary and essential.

In the Keats process the button is not made of a continuous piece of sheet metal, but has side seams in the post, and ha base plate composed of two separate parts, and the head is open on the under side. It could not be used as a collar button, but is intended to be permanently fastened either to eyelet holes, or to the fabric with which it is connected.

We cannot see in these devices, taken separately or together, an anticipation of the Krementz button. Indeed, the court below concedes that "Krementz was the first to make a stud from a single continuous piece of metal in which the head was hollow and round in shape."

The learned judge was, however, of the opinion that "any competent mechanic, versed in the manufacture of hollow sheet-metal articles, having before him the patents of Stokes and Keats, could have made these improvements and modifications, without exercising invention, and by applying the ordinary skill of the calling."

It is not easy to draw the line that separates the ordinary skill of a mechanic, versed in his art, from the exercise of patentable invention, and the difficulty is specially great in the mechanic arts, where the successive steps in improvements are numerous, and where the changes and modifications are introduced by practical mechanics. In the present instance, however, we find a new and useful article, with obvious. advantages over previous structures of the kind. A button formed from a single sheet of metal, free from sutures, of a convenient shape, and uniting strength with lightness, would seem to come fairly within the meaning of the patent laws.

Opinion of the Court.

The tools to be used in making the button are not described, but they are not claimed to be new. And the method or process of manufacture is described with sufficient particularity to enable any one skilled in the art to follow it. Buttons made of several pieces are liable to break at the soldered joints, and it is stated by an experienced witness that the metal by the process of soldering becomes soft and liable to bend. The different pieces are set together by hand, and are not always uniform or put together truly.

The view of the court below, that Krementz's step in the art was one obvious to any skilled mechanic, is negatived by the conduct of Cottle, the president of the defendant company. He was himself a patentee under letters granted April 16, 1878, for an improvement in the construction of collar and sleeve buttons, and put in evidence in this case. In his specification he speaks of the disadvantages of what he calls "the common practice to make the head, back and post of collar and sleeve buttons separate, and to unite them by solder." His improvement was to form a button of two pieces, the post and base forming one piece, and then soldering to the post the head of the button as the other piece. Yet, skilled as he was, and with his attention specially turned to the subject, he failed to see, what Krementz afterwards saw, that a button might be made of one continuous sheet of metal, wholly dispensing with solder, of an improved shape, of increased strength, and requiring less material.

It was also made to appear that the advantages of the new button were at once recognized by the trade and by the public, and that very large quantities have been sold.

The argument drawn from the commercial success of a patented article is not always to be relied on. Other causes, such as the enterprise of the vendors, and the resort to lavish expenditures in advertising, may coöperate to promote a large marketable demand. Yet, as was well said by Mr. Justice Brown, in the case of Consolidated Brake-Shoe Co. v. Detroit Co., 47 Fed. Rep. 894, "when the other facts in the case leave the question of invention in doubt, the fact that the device has gone into general use and has displaced other devices which

Opinion of the Court.

had previously been employed for analogous uses, is sufficient to turn the scale in favor of the existence of invention."

Loom Co. v. Higgins, 105 U. S. 580, 591, was a case where the patented device consisted in a slight modification of existing mechanism, and it was contended that this slight change did not constitute a patentable invention; but this view did not prevail, the court saying:

"It is further argued, however, that supposing the devices to be sufficiently described, they do not show any invention; and that the combination set forth in the fifth claim is a mere aggregation of old devices already well known; and therefore it is not patentable. This argument would be sound if the combination claimed by Webster was an obvious one for attaining the advantages proposed, one which would occur to any mechanic skilled in the art. But it is plain from the evidence, and from the very fact that it was not sooner adopted and used, that it did not for years occur in this light to even the most skilful persons. It may have been under their very eyes; they may almost be said to have stumbled over it; but they certainly failed to see it, to estimate its value, and to bring it into notice. Who was the first to see it, to understand its value, to give it shape and form, to bring it into notice and urge its adoption, is a question to which we shall shortly give our attention. At this point we are constrained to say that we cannot yield our assent to the argument, that the combination of the different parts or elements for attaining the object in view was so obvious as to merit no title to invention. Now that it has succeeded, it may seem very plain to any one that he could have done it as well. This is often the case with inventions of the greatest merit. It may be laid down as a general rule, though perhaps not an invariable one, that if a new combination and arrangement of known elements produce a new and beneficial result never attained before, it is evidence of invention. It was certainly a new and useful result to make a loom produce fifty yards a day when it never before had produced more than forty; and we think that the combination of elements by which this was effected, even if those elements were sepa

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Syllabus.

rately known before, was invention sufficient to form the basis of a patent."

Consolidated Valve Co. v Crosby Valve Co., 113 U. S. 157; Magowan v. New York Belting Co., 141 U. S. 332; Barbed Wire Patent, 143 U. S. 275; Gandy v. Main Belting Co., 143 U.S. 587, are all to the same effect.

In the very recent case of Topliff v. Topliff, 145 U. S. 156 163, 164, where there was a contest between two patents, with but a slight difference between them, the court said:

"Trifling as this deviation seems to be, it renders it possible to adapt the Augur device to any side-spring wagon of ordinary construction. While the question of patentable novelty in this device is by no means free from doubt, we are inclined, in view of the extensive use to which these springs have been put by manufacturers of wagons, to resolve that doubt in favor of the patentee and sustain the patent." We think, therefore, we are within the principle and reasoning of these cases in reversing the decree of the court below dismissing the bill and in remanding the record, with directions to proceed in the case in conformity with this opinion.

Reversed.

UNITED STATES v. UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO.

No. 149. Argued March 20, 21, 1893. — Decided April 10, 1893.

The right conferred by the act of July 1, 1862, 12 Stat. 489, c. 120, as subsequently amended, upon the corporation afterwards known as the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, to construct its road substantially in a direct line to Denver, and from thence northerly, to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne, and to acquire a grant of public lands thereby upon each side of its railroad as constructed, was not affected by the act of March 3, 1869, 15 Stat. 324, c. 127, in such a way as to make the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, terminate at Denver, and

Statement of the Case.

to cause its land grants to terminate there; but, on the contrary, the act of 1862, being a grant in præsenti, the Company's right to lands upon each side of its road became fixed from the moment it proceeded, under the act of 1866, to establish its line of definite location so as to make the same extend from Kansas City westwardly to Denver, and thence northwardly to Cheyenne, and the act of 1869 is not to be construed as breaking the continuity of the line.

If there were any doubt with regard to the interpretation of the act of 1869, the construction placed upon it by the Land Department for eighteen years, under which lands have been put upon the market and sold, would be entitled to considerable weight.

THIS case arose upon demurrers and a plea to a bill in equity filed by the United States against the Union Pacific Railway Company, and 173 other corporations and individuals, to procure the surrender and cancellation of certain land patents issued to the Kansas Pacific Railway and the Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company, and for a decree declaring all conveyances of such lands clouds upon the title of the United States.

The bill averred in substance that, by an act of Congress of July 1, 1862, 12 Stat. 489, c. 120, incorporating the Union Pacific Railroad Company, such company was authorized to construct a road from a point on the one hundredth meridian longitude, between the south margin of the valley of the Republican River and the north margin of the valley of the Platte River, in the Territory of Nebraska, to the western boundary of Nevada, and was granted every odd-numbered section of land amounting to five alternate sections of land per mile, afterwards extended to ten sections by the act of July 2, 1864, 13 Stat. 356, c. 216, on each side of said railroad, on the line, thereof, and within the limits of ten miles, (subsequently increased to twenty,) on each side of the road; and that whenever the company should have completed forty consecutive miles of its road, (afterwards reduced to twenty, by the same act of 1864,) patents should issue for such public lands as had been granted to it, and had been earned in accordance with the provisions of the act.

By the same act it was further provided that the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad Company, which had