Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1885 — Priority of Invention. [ARTICLE]

Priority of Invention.

The following are points in decisions on priority of invention: The party who first reduces an invention to actual use is entitled to the patent for it, although the other party may have first conceived it, if he did not exercise reasonable diligence in reducing it to practice. If the party who first conceived a machine followed up the idea diligently, and was the first to reduce it to actual practice, he is entitled to a patent for it, although his competitors had complete working drawings of it previously prepared, and had obtained a patent. Whoever first reduces an invention to practice, and makes an application of it to use, will usually be held the prior inventor. In order to defeat a patent the courts require it to be shown that another not only conceived the invention in dispute before the patentee, but was also the first to perfect and adapt the same to practical use, or was using reasonable diligence for that purpose. The parties who first embodied an invention in a machine which they kept in < peration afterward for actual use, besides manufacturing and selling other machines, are prima facie entitled to that patent. He is the inventor, entitled to the protection of the patent law, who is first to complete the invention and publish it to the world, and not he who confines the knowledge of it to his client. Where an invention consists of a combination of elements, the date when all the elements are combined is the date of the invention. When one is first to conceive an invention, throws aside all evidence of the conception, makes no effort to complete or introduce it to the public, and delays making an application for a patent nearly four years after another has brought it into extensive use, he has no standing as an inventor.— Electrical Review.