What You May Patent.—In all of the foregoing text I assumed that your invention consisted of a machine but according to rule 24 of the Rules of Practice a patent may be obtained for any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new or useful improvement thereof.
Since all mechanical movements have been invented and all necessary electric currents have been discovered and enough chemical elements are known it may seem on first thought quite impossible to invent or discover anything either new or useful, yet the patent office is granting patents at the rate of about 125,000 a year.
The way inventions are made is by forming new combinations. Just as there is no practical limit to the number of new words that could be formed by new combinations of the letters of the alphabet, so there is no practical limit to the new machines that can be invented by novel combinations of the mechanical movements, with the result that something can be done that had not been done before, or that something is done in a better, cheaper and easier way than it had ever been done before. And the same is also true of combining electro-mechanical devices and of combining chemical elements.
Inventing means that you are clever in combining certain movements, devices and chemicals in a new way to produce a certain result which may or may not have been done before, and so it is the new combination of things that you really get a patent on.
Looking Ahead.—It must be plain now from what has been said that when you have completed your machine, or product, or compound, all your inventive efforts will be in vain unless you go over every part with the utmost care and try to think out how it could be changed or done in some other way by some one else and so make your patent worthless, and your hard efforts wasted.
What you should do, though it is easier to advise than it is to accomplish, is to so word the claims of your patent application that they will broadly cover not only your particular combination but every other form of it. Finally should your invention be one of considerable magnitude and great importance you must keep working on it all the time and making improvements and covering the last named with patents or the other fellow—the patent thief—will get you sure, and often he will do it anyway.
What a Patent Consists Of.—All through this chapter the words drawings, specifications and claims are used and now suppose we find out just what is meant by them.
Every patent application is made up of five parts and these are (1) the petition; (2) the drawings; (3) the specification; (4) the claims, and (5) the oath. The petition and the oath are separate papers and do not appear in the patent when it is granted. The drawings, specification and claims form the patent when it is granted.
The form of petition by a sole inventor is as follows:
To the Commissioner of Patents: