Edison, His Life and Inventions [73]
there, a few months perhaps after suit is brought, instead of many years afterward, as in this country. And in England, when a case is once finally decided it is settled for the whole country, while here it is not so. Here a patent having once been sustained, say, in Boston, may have to be litigated all over again in New York, and again in Philadelphia, and so on for all the Federal circuits. Furthermore, it seems to me that scientific disputes should be decided by some court containing at least one or two scientific men-- men capable of comprehending the significance of an invention and the difficulties of its accomplishment --if justice is ever to be given to an inventor. And I think, also, that this court should have the power to summon before it and examine any recognized expert in the special art, who might be able to testify to FACTS for or against the patent, instead of trying to gather the truth from the tedious essays of hired experts, whose depositions are really nothing but sworn arguments. The real gist of patent suits is generally very simple, and I have no doubt that any judge of fair intelligence, assisted by one or more scientific advisers, could in a couple of days at the most examine all the necessary witnesses; hear all the necessary arguments, and actually decide an ordinary patent suit in a way that would more nearly be just, than can now be done at an expenditure of a hundred times as much money and months and years of preparation. And I have no doubt that the time taken by the court would be enormously less, because if a judge attempts to read the bulky records and briefs, that work alone would require several days.
"Acting as judges, inventors would not be very apt to correctly decide a complicated law point; and on the other hand, it is hard to see how a lawyer can decide a complicated scientific point rightly. Some inventors complain of our Patent Office, but my own experience with the Patent Office is that the examiners are fair-minded and intelligent, and when they refuse a patent they are generally right; but I think the whole trouble lies with the system in vogue in the Federal courts for trying patent suits, and in the fact, which cannot be disputed, that the Federal judges, with but few exceptions, do not comprehend complicated scientific questions. To secure uniformity in the several Federal circuits and correct errors, it has been proposed to establish a central court of patent appeals in Washington. This I believe in; but this court should also contain at least two scientific men, who would not be blind to the sophistry of paid experts.[7] Men whose inventions would have created wealth of millions have been ruined and prevented from making any money whereby they could continue their careers as creators of wealth for the general good, just because the experts befuddled the judge by their misleading statements."
[7] As an illustration of the perplexing nature of expert evidence in patent cases, the reader will probably be interested in perusing the following extracts from the opinion of Judge Dayton, in the suit of Bryce Bros. Co. vs. Seneca Glass Co., tried in the United States Circuit Court, Northern District of West Virginia, reported in The Federal Reporter, 140, page 161:
"On this subject of the validity of this patent, a vast amount of conflicting, technical, perplexing, and almost hypercritical discussion and opinion has been indulged, both in the testimony and in the able and exhaustive arguments and briefs of counsel. Expert Osborn for defendant, after setting forth minutely his superior qualifications mechanical education, and great experience, takes up in detail the patent claims, and shows to his own entire satisfaction that none of them are new; that all of them have been applied, under one form or another, in some twenty- two previous patents, and in two other machines, not patented, to-wit, the Central Glass and Kuny Kahbel ones; that the whole machine is only `an aggregation of well-known mechanical elements that any skilled designer would bring to his use in the
"Acting as judges, inventors would not be very apt to correctly decide a complicated law point; and on the other hand, it is hard to see how a lawyer can decide a complicated scientific point rightly. Some inventors complain of our Patent Office, but my own experience with the Patent Office is that the examiners are fair-minded and intelligent, and when they refuse a patent they are generally right; but I think the whole trouble lies with the system in vogue in the Federal courts for trying patent suits, and in the fact, which cannot be disputed, that the Federal judges, with but few exceptions, do not comprehend complicated scientific questions. To secure uniformity in the several Federal circuits and correct errors, it has been proposed to establish a central court of patent appeals in Washington. This I believe in; but this court should also contain at least two scientific men, who would not be blind to the sophistry of paid experts.[7] Men whose inventions would have created wealth of millions have been ruined and prevented from making any money whereby they could continue their careers as creators of wealth for the general good, just because the experts befuddled the judge by their misleading statements."
[7] As an illustration of the perplexing nature of expert evidence in patent cases, the reader will probably be interested in perusing the following extracts from the opinion of Judge Dayton, in the suit of Bryce Bros. Co. vs. Seneca Glass Co., tried in the United States Circuit Court, Northern District of West Virginia, reported in The Federal Reporter, 140, page 161:
"On this subject of the validity of this patent, a vast amount of conflicting, technical, perplexing, and almost hypercritical discussion and opinion has been indulged, both in the testimony and in the able and exhaustive arguments and briefs of counsel. Expert Osborn for defendant, after setting forth minutely his superior qualifications mechanical education, and great experience, takes up in detail the patent claims, and shows to his own entire satisfaction that none of them are new; that all of them have been applied, under one form or another, in some twenty- two previous patents, and in two other machines, not patented, to-wit, the Central Glass and Kuny Kahbel ones; that the whole machine is only `an aggregation of well-known mechanical elements that any skilled designer would bring to his use in the