DECISIONS RELATING TO PATENTS

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The decision of the Board of Examiners-in-Chief is reversed, and priority awarded to Dickson.
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Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Reissued patent No. 5,774 to Shubael Cottle, February 24, 1874, for improvement in chains for necklaces, declared void, the first claim, if not for want of novelty, for want of patentability, and the second for want of novelty. Neither the tubing, nor the open spiral link formed of tubing, nor the process of making either the open or the closed link, nor the junction of closed and open spiral links in a chain, was invented by the patentee. All improvement is not invention and entitled to protection as such. Thus to entitle it it must be the product of some exercise of the inventive faculties, and it must involve something more than what is obvious to persons skilled in the art to which it relates.