right only that the plaintiff can and does claim validity for its warning notice.

The words used in the statute are few, simple and familiar, they have not been changed substantially since they were first used in the Act of 1790, c. 7, 1 Stat. 109; Bauer v. O'Donnell, 229 U. S. 1, 9, and their meaning would seem not to be doubtful if we can avoid reading into them that which they really do not contain.

In interpreting this language of the statute it will be of service to keep in mind three rules long established by this court, applicable to the patent law and to the construction of patents, viz:

1st. The scope of every patent is limited to the invention described in the claims contained in it, read in the light of the specification. These so mark where the progress claimed by the patent begins and where it ends that they have been aptly likened to the description in a deed, which sets the bounds to the grant which it contains. It is to the claims of every patent, therefore, that we must turn when we are seeking to determine what the invention is, the exclusive use of which is given to the inventor by the grant provided for by the statute,--"He can claim nothing beyond them." Keystone Bridge Co. v. Phænix Iron Co., 95 U. S. 274; Railroad Co. v. Mellon, 104 U. S. 112, 118; Yale Lock Mfg. Co. v. Greenleaf, 117 U. S. 554, 559; McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U. S. 419, 424.

2nd. It has long been settled that the patentee receives nothing from the law which he did not have before, and that the only effect of his patent is to restrain others from manufacturing, using or selling that which he has invented. The patent law simply protects him in the monopoly of that which he has invented and has described in the claims of his patent. United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 167 U. S. 224, 239; Paper Bag Patent Case, 210 U. S. 405, 424; Bauer v. O'Donnell, 229 U. S. 1, 10.

3rd. Since Pennock v. Dialogue, 2 Pet. 1, was decided in

1829 this court has consistently held that the primary purpose of our patent laws is not the creation of private fortunes for the owners of patents but is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" (Constitution, Art. I, § 8), an object and purpose authoritatively expressed by Mr. Justice Story, in that decision, saying:

"While one great object [of our patent laws] was, by holding out a reasonable reward to inventors, and giving them an exclusive right to their inventions for a limited period, to stimulate the efforts of genius; the main object was 'to promote the progress of science and useful arts."" Thirty years later this court, returning to the subject, in Kendall v. Winsor, 21 How. 322, again pointedly and significantly says:

"It is undeniably true, that the limited and temporary monopoly granted to inventors was never designed for their exclusive profit or advantage; the benefit to the public or community at large was another and doubtless the primary object in granting and securing that monopoly."

This court has never modified this statement of the relative importance of the public and private interests involved in every grant of a patent, even while declaring that in the construction of patents and the patent laws, inventors shall be fairly, even liberally, treated. Grant v. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218, 241; Winans v. Denmead, 15 How. 330; Walker on Patents, § 185.

These rules of law make it very clear that the scope of the grant which may be made to an inventor in a patent, pursuant to the statute, must be limited to the invention described in the claims of his patent (104 U. S. 118, supra) and to determine what grant may lawfully be so made we must hold fast to the language of the act of Congress providing for it, which is found in two sections of the Revised Statutes. Section 4886 provides that "Any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, ma

may

chine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, obtain a patent therefor"; and § 4884 provides that such patent when obtained "shall contain the patentee, his heirs or assigns right to covery."

use

a grant to

of the exclusive

the invention or dis

Thus the inventor may apply for, and, if he meets the required conditions, may obtain, a patent for the new and useful invention which he has discovered, which patent shall contain a grant of the right to the exclusive use of his discovery.

Plainly, this language of the statute and the established rules to which we have referred restrict the patent granted on a machine, such as we have in this case, to the mechanism described in the patent as necessary to produce the described results. It is not concerned with and has nothing to do with the materials with which or on which the machine operates. The grant is of the exclusive right to use the mechanism to produce the result with any appropriate material, and the materials with which the machine is operated are no part of the patented machine or of the combination which produces the patented result. The difference is clear and vital between the exclusive right to use the machine which the law gives to the inventor and the right to use it exclusively with prescribed materials to which such a license notice as we have here seeks to restrict it. The restrictions of the law relate to the useful and novel features of the machine which are described in the claims of the patent, they have nothing to do with the materials used in the operation of the machine; while the notice restrictions have nothing to do with the invention which is patented but relate wholly to the materials to be used with it. Both in form and in substance the notice attempts a restriction upon the use of the supplies only and it cannot with any regard to pro

priety in the use of language be termed a restriction upon the use of the machine itself.

Whatever right the owner may have to control by restriction the materials to be used in operating the machine must be derived through the general law from the ownership of the property in the machine and it cannot be derived from or protected by the patent law, which allows a grant only of the right to an exclusive use of the new and useful discovery which has been made this and nothing more.

This construction gives to the inventor the exclusive use of just what his inventive genius has discovered. It is all that the statute provides shall be given to him and it is all that he should receive, for it is the fair as well as the statutory measure of his reward for his contribution to the public stock of knowledge. If his discovery is an important one his reward under such a construction of the law will be large, as experience has abundantly proved, and if it be unimportant he should not be permitted by legal devices to impose an unjust charge upon the public in return for the use of it. For more than a century this plain meaning of the statute was accepted as its technical meaning, and that it afforded ample incentive to exertion by inventive genius is proved by the fact that under it the greatest inventions of our time, teeming with inventions, were made. It would serve no good purpose to amplify by argument or illustration this plain meaning of the statute. It is so plain that to argue it would obscure it.

It was not until the time came in which the full possibilities seem first to have been appreciated of uniting, in one, many branches of business through corporate organization and of gathering great profits in small payments, which are not realized or resented, from many, rather than smaller or even equal profits in larger payments, which are felt and may be refused, from a few, that it came to be thought that the "right to use the invention"

of a patent gave to the patentee or his assigns the right to restrict the use of it to materials or supplies not described in the patent and not by its terms made a part of the thing patented.

The construction of the patent law which justifies as valid the restriction of patented machines, by notice, to use with unpatented supplies necessary in the operation of them, but which are no part of them, is believed to have originated in Heaton-Peninsular Button-Fastener Co. v. Eureka Specialty Co., 77 Fed. Rep. 288 (which has come to be widely referred to as the Button-Fastener Case), decided by the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit in 1896. In this case the court, recognizing the pioneer character of the decision it was rendering, speaks of the "novel restrictions" which it is considering and says that it is called upon "to mark another boundary line around the patentee's monopoly, which will debar him from engrossing the market for an article not the subject of a patent," which it declined to do.

This decision proceeds upon the argument that, since the patentee may withold his patent altogether from public use he must logically and necessarily be permitted to impose any conditions which he chooses upon any use which he may allow of it. The defect in this thinking springs from the substituting of inference and argument for the language of the statute and from failure to distinguish between the rights which are given to the inventor by the patent law and which he may assert against all the world through an infringement proceeding and rights which he may create for himself by private contract which, however, are subject to the rules of general as distinguished from those of the patent law. While it is true that under the statutes as they were (and now are) a patentee might withhold his patented machine from public use, yet if he consented to use it himself or through others, such use immediately fell within the terms of the