| M | Envelopes, Stationery, | |||
| A | Postage, Expressage, | SUBWAYS AND TUBES | { | Reinforced Concrete, Air-locks, etc. |
| I | Pneumatic Mail boxes, | |||
| L | Letter boxes, etc. |
| BANKING | { | Species, Banknotes, Vaults, and Safes, Checks, etc. |
Copyright 1909, by Goodwin B. Smith.
CHAPTER VII.
NECESSARY STEPS
"In any business, it is to-day's unknown facts that wreck the machine tomorrow. Therefore, find out the facts."
Almost all inventors show an unusually needless amount of haste in rushing off to an attorney and applying for a patent, even before they have given their idea any practical demonstration whatsoever. This is, in the opinion of the writer, all wrong, and is not the most practical way to proceed. The application for patent, and filing of carefully drawn specification and claims, is, of course, highly important and necessary, but it should not be undertaken until after the most searching, practical tests of the invention, as well as the most careful investigation as to the public demand for your idea, as it is from the latter source that profits will come. The care with which your specification is written, and the claims drawn, will regulate the strength of your protection against infringers. Don't forget that the red seal and blue ribbon on a worthless patent are just as red and blue as they are on a high-grade, "suit-proof," one that has stood the tests of the courts from bottom to the top.
WHAT THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT SAYS.
"The specification and claims of a patent, particularly if the invention be at all complicated, constitute one of the most difficult legal instruments to draw with accuracy, and in view of the fact that valuable inventions are often placed in the hands of inexperienced persons to prepare such specification and claims, it is no matter of surprise that the latter frequently fail to describe with requisite certainty the exact invention of the patentee, and err either in claiming that which the patentee had not in fact patented, or in omitting some element which was a valuable or essential part of his actual invention." Topliff vs. Topliff, 145 U.S. 156.
The highest court of the land thus puts itself on record in reference to the importance of having the specification and claims of your patent properly drawn. It is equally as important to have your models, drawings, patterns, etc., accurately designed and executed.
Every week the "Official Gazette," published by the U.S. Patent Office, is chock full of new, novel and ingenious devices on which patents have been granted, but which are in lines in which the demand and sales are so very restricted that the profits in seventeen years will scarcely pay for the cost of the patent. As Dr. Grimshaw, Ph.D., M. E., a celebrated inventor and scholar, known to many Americans, and at present residing in Germany, so aptly puts it, it is well to remember "There are some lines in which competition is so fierce that there would not be any use in coming into the field. If the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, Fulton and Morse, Whitney and Howe, Edison and McCormick, and a dozen more of the great inventors of the world, past and present, were to put their heads together, and get up a new car-coupler, the chances are that they could not get thirty cents for the patent. The thing is overdone."