Opinion of the Court. 263 U.S. sue of his patent to the secret archives, as an excuse and explanation for his course. But this is no justification. By the terms of his letter directing it to be done, he said he wished to apply for foreign patents and that he would not ask delay for more than a year. Moreover, § 8 of the law of 1836, quoted above, wherein is found the only authority for such a proceeding, limits the possible period of the deposit in the secret archives to one year, for the evident purpose of preparing a model. Here the findings show that the model had been filed before the deposit, and also show that he never applied for a foreign. patent. These circumstances only emphasize the truth of his avowal of 1862 that he was deliberately delaying the issue of his patent so that its term and monopoly would reach forward to include nearly ten more years of the future and cover a much more commercially lucrative period than if he had obtained his patent when he might and should have requested it. Thus he would have deprived the public of a decade of free use of the patent which the law intended. It is true that, under the special law authorizing this action, Woodbridge's representatives could not recover compensation from the Government except for the period of seventeen years from 1852. But this feature of the special law is immaterial in considering the jurisdictional question whether by his conduct he forfeited his right to his patent. That must be decided on the facts as they were between 1852 and 1862. Had he taken out his patent in 1852, he would have been entitled to a term of fourteen years with a contingent possibility of an extension for seven years more. With the change of the law in 1861, had he succeeded in his effort on the last day of that year, he would have secured a patent for seventeen years from 1862. To state it in another way, his certain term if he had been diligent and not sought to evade the law, would have expired in 1866. Had he succeeded in his illegal plan 50 and procured a ended in 1879. Opinion of the Court. patent in 1862, his term would have Part of this unconscionable postponeof his monopoly was due to the change of law in 1861, but nearly ten years, as already said, was the result of his deliberate design. ment of the end No case cited to us presents exactly these facts, but the general principles upon which this Court has proceeded in cases of abandonment by conduct and its views of the rights of the public and the purpose of the constitutional authority to grant patents and of Congress in its legislative execution of that purpose, set forth in those cases, leave no doubt of the conclusion we must reach. Pennock v. Dialogue, 2 Pet. 1; Wyeth v. Stone, 1 Story, 273, 282; Shaw v. Cooper, 7 Pet. 292; Kendall v. Winsor, 21 How. 322, 329; Planing-Machine Co. v. Keith, 101 U. S. 479, 485; United States Rifle & Cartridge Co. v. Whitney Arms Co., 118 U. S. 22, 25. Of course the conclusion that patents have been abandoned by conduct in such cases is reached by inference that the delay and other circumstances indicated an intention to give up effort to secure a patent. The circumstances usually relied on to show abandonment are a rejection of an application for a patent by the Patent Office and unexplained delay in prosecuting appeal from one of the several executive tribunals to another provided in the procedure of obtaining a patent. From these intent to abandon is presumed. It is urged that such authorities have no application because intent to abandon can not be inferred from the delay in this case. That is true; but our conclusion rests not on neglect and intention to give up the patent but on a deliberate and unlawful purpose to postpone the term of the patent the inventor always intended to secure. The case which comes nearer in its facts to this than any other, and is a case of forfeiture rather than abandonment, is that of Macbeth-Evans Glass Co. v. General Opinion of the Court. 263 U.S. Electric Co., 246 Fed. 695. There, an inventor of a process for making glass used it in secret for nearly ten years, selling the product. At the end of that time when the secret was betrayed by an employee, the inventor applied for a patent. It was held by the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit, in a most satisfactory opinion by Judge Warrington, that the policy of the patent law to secure to the public the full benefit of inventions after expiration of the fixed term deemed sufficient reasonably to stimulate invention, would be defeated if an inventor could withhold his invention from the public for an indefinite time for his own profit, and that the right to preserve a monopoly in an invention by keeping it a trade secret and the right to secure its protection. under the patent laws were inconsistent and could not both be exercised by an inventor. The gist of the reason for the conclusion there was the same as here, that the purpose and result of the conduct of the inventor were unduly to postpone the time when the public could enjoy the free use of the invention. Mr. Justice Clifford, in Bates v. Coe, 98 U. S. 31, when considering the validity of a reissued patent, used these words (p. 46): "Inventors may, if they can, keep their invention secret; and if they do for any length of time, they do not forfeit their right to apply for a patent, unless another in the meantime has made the invention, and secured by patent, the exclusive right to make, use, and vend the patented improvement. Within that rule and subject to that condition, inventors may delay to apply for a patent." And in Parks v. Booth, 102 U. S. 96, 105, the same Justice said: "Unless inventors keep their inventions secret they are required to be vigilant in securing patents for their protection." These remarks were not necessary to the conclusion in the case he was describing, and those in Bates v. Coe have given some concern to judges having to consider actual cases of deliberate delay. Chief Justice Alvey of the Court of Appeals of the District said of them (In re Appeal of Mower, 15 App. D. C. 144, 152, 153): "This, doubtless, is a correct general proposition; but like all general propositions, it may have its exceptions under special and particular circumstances, even where the intervening rights of third parties have not been secured by patent. "The patent laws are founded in a large public policy to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. The public, therefore, is a most material party to, and should be duly considered in, every application for a patent, securing to the individual a monopoly for a limited time, in consideration for the exercise of his genius and skill. But the arts and sciences will certainly not be promoted by giving encouragement to inventors to withhold and conceal their inventions for an indefinite time, or to a time when they may use and apply their inventions to their own exclusive advantage, irrespective of the public benefit, and certainly not if the inventor is allowed to conceal his invention to be brought forward in some after time to thwart and defeat a more diligent and active inventor, who has placed the benefit of his invention within the reach and knowledge of the public." Judge Warrington, in the Macbeth-Evans Case, supra, refers to the same remarks (246 Fed. 705) as follows: "We therefore cannot think that the rule laid down in Pennock v. Dialogue and Kendall v. Winsor was intended to be qualified by the remarks of Mr. Justice Clifford in Bates v. Coe . . . We are confirmed in this by the reference made in Bates v. Coe . . . to the decision in Pennock v. Dialogue and to the effect of the legislation enacted since, and particularly by the view expressed by Opinion of the Court. 263 U.S. the same justice while sitting on the circuit in Jones v. Sewall, 3 Cliff. 563, 592, 593-Fed. Cas. No. 7,495 where, in distinguishing between the intent to be inferred from experimental practice of an invention and practice for gain, he said: "Such an inference (of intention to surrender the invention to the public) is never favored, nor will it in general be sufficient to prove such a defense, unless it appears that the use, exercise, or practice of the invention was somewhat extensive, and for the purpose of gain, evincing an intent on the part of the inventor to secure the exclusive benefits of his invention without applying for the protection of letters patent.' We concur in these explanations and qualifications of Mr. Justice Clifford's general remarks in Bates v. Coe, and for the reasons given. They certainly should not be construed to militate against our conclusion in this case and the reasons upon which it is founded. Counsel for the appellants relies chiefly on the cases of Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., 93 U. S. 486; Colgate v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 6 Fed. Cases, p. 85, and United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 167 U. S. 224, known as the Berliner Case. The first two cases have no bearing on this case. In them, the Court found as a fact that the delays of the inventor in prosecuting his claims in the Patent Office after rejection were not due to an intention to abandon but to his necessitous circumstances. In the Berliner Case there was also a question of fact but a different one. The Government charged in that case, as it is charged here, that the Telephone Company, the owner of the invention, deliberately delayed proceedings in the Patent Office for thirteen years in order that, when its main Bell patent expired, the patent for the indispensable Berliner device might overlap and continue the monopoly as a whole. A reading of Mr. Justice Brewer's opinion in that case shows that the at |