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- text §of the. decision iujthe case of The Qonsoiidated
‘Electri‘e- Light Complainant, Appeﬁant, .vs.
5‘ Th¢iiM¢Keesp0rtLight Company, Defendant,


ﬂ.‘ , ‘Appele‘lee, ﬁled in the U. S. Supreme
5 - ' » Court, November 11, 1895. r
Jdstiee Bradley’s. Decision in Circuit Court Afﬁrmed.

‘ 4
am, ‘ ' . M
a v 4 _ ~b » . , _ W “11"
1. V l eunnommn Pmnous MATERIAL.
, ( ' .‘.f'If. as befhre observed, there were some general uality running through
‘ I the whole ﬁbrous and textile kingdom which distiugui ~ ed it from every other,
J and gave it a peculiar ﬁtness for the rticular purposelthe man who discovered
1 P " ouch quality might fjustly be entitle to a patent; but thhﬁekuot the case here.
f‘jiigfvgf' "An examination lo materiais of‘this claes carried on for months revealed
"mthing‘that seemed to he ada ted to the purpose; and even “the carbonized
=i;‘="§;§»-“;fj-
paper and wood carbons speci ed in the mom, experiments with which ﬁrst
eggs ’- 1; L.” A suggest their incorporation therein. were ound to be so inferior to the bamboo,
f; -‘ afterwards discowered by Edison, that the complainant was forced to aban-
' *f'; ff 'd'ou its pateutiu that particular, and take up wath the material discovered by
ﬂea; its rival. ‘ Under theeecircumstances, to hold that one who had discovered
that a certaih'ﬁbrous or textile material answered the re aired purpose. should
obtain the right to exclude everybody from the whole omain of ﬁbrous and
'";.,jj“textiie matenals, and thereby shut out any further efforts to discover a better
fj-“f; specimen Qf-t'hat class than’the. atehtee had employed, would be an unwar-
éiet extension of his monbpo‘ , and operate rather to discourage than to
ﬁg prjomete invention. 'f '


it??? 5.1; j; ',, ' gunman on AN ARﬁH on HORSESHOE SHAPE.
Tim
'f; ftwfefhjawe not, fouhd it necessary in this connection to consider the amend-
méntg thﬁ‘wm made tothe‘origiual speciﬁcation, upon which so much stress
M‘ig‘ltheopiﬂiog of the court below, since we are all agreed that the
71cm 3 cif’thisrpeteut, with the exception of the third, are too xndeﬁnite to be


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Supreme Court of the United States,
NO. 10.—-OCTOBER TERM, 1895.
T I Appeal from the Circuit Court of
I}? NC‘gDESCENT the United States for the West-
AMP ATENT' ern District of Pennsylvania.
(November 11, 1895.)
This was a bill in equity, ﬁled by the Consolidated
Electric Light Company against the McKeesport Light
Company, to recover damages for the infringement of
letters-patent No. 317,076, issued May 12, 1885, to
the Electro-Dynamic Light Company, assignee of Saw-
yer & Man, for an electric light. The defendants justi-
ﬁed under certain patents to Thomas A. Edison, par-
ticularly No. 223,898, issued January 27, 1880; denied
the novelty and utility of the complainants’ patent,
and averred that the same had been fraudulently and
illegally procured. The real defendant was the Edison
Electric Light Company, and the case involved a con-
test between what are known as the Sawyer & Man
and the Edison systems of electric lighting.
In their application, Sawyer & Man stated that their
invention related to “that class of electric lamps employ-
ing an incandescent conductor enclosed in a transparent,
hermetically-sealed vessel or chamber, from which
oxygen is excluded, and . . . more especially to
the incandescing conductor, its substance, its form, and
its combination with the other elements composing the
lamp. Its object is to secure a cheap and effective ap-
paratus ; and our improvement consists, ﬁrst, of the
combination, in a lamp chamber, composed wholly of
glass, as described in patent No. 205,144,” upon which
this patent was declared to be an improvement, “ of an
2
incandescing conductor of carbon made from a vegetable
ﬁbrous material, in contradistinction to a similar con-
ductor made from mineral or gas carbon, and also in
the form of such conductor so made from such vegeta-
ble carbon, and combined in the lighting circuit with
the exhausted chamber of the lamp.”
The following drawings exhibit the substance of the
invention :


The speciﬁcation further stated that :
“ In the practice of our invention we have made use
of carbonized paper, and also wood carbon. We have
also used such conductors or burners of various shapes
such as pieces with their lower ends secured to their
respective supports and having their upper ends united
3
so as to form an inverted V-shaped burner. We have
also used conductors of varying contours—that is, with
rectangular bends instead of curvilinear ones; but we
prefer the arch shape.”
“ No especial description of making the illuminating
carbon conductors, described in this speciﬁcation and
making the subject-matter of this improvement, is
thought necessary, as any of the ordinary methods of
forming the material to be carbonized to the desired
shape and size, and carbonizirig it while conﬁned in re-
torts in powdered carbon, substantially according to
the methods in practice before the date of this im-
provement, may be adopted in the practice thereof by
any one skilledxin the arts appertaining to the making
of carbons for electric lighting or for other use in the
arts.”
“ An important practical advantage which is secured
by the arch form of incandescing carbon is that it
permits the carbon to expand and contract under the
varying temperatures to which it is subjected when
the electric current is turned on or off without
altering the position of its ﬁxed terminals. Thus the
necessity for a special mechanical device to compensate
for the expansion and contraction which has heretofore
been necessary is entirely dispensed with, and thus
the lamp is materially simpliﬁed in its construction.
Another advantage of the arch form is that the shadow
cast by such burners is less than that produced by other
forms of burners when ﬁtted with the necessary devices
to support them.”
“Another important advantage resulting from our
construction of the lamp results from the fact that the
wall forming the chamber of the lamp through which
the electrodes pass to the interior of the lamp is made
wholly of glass, by which all danger of oxidation, leak-
age, or short-circuiting is avoided.”
“ The advantages resulting from the manufacture of
the carbon from vegetable ﬁbrous or textile material
instead of mineral or gas carbon are many. Among
4
them may be mentioned the convenience afforded for
cutting and making the conductor in the desired form
and size, the purity and equality of the carbon ob-
tained, its susceptibility to tempering, both as to hard—
ness and resistance, and its toughness and durability.
\Ve have used such burners in closed or hermetically-
sealed transparent chambers, in a vacuum, in nitrogen
gas, and in hydrogen gas ; but we have obtained the
best results in a vacuum, or an attenuated atmosphere
of nitrogen gas, the great desideratum being to exclude
oxygen or other gases capable of combining with car-
bon at high temperatures from the incandescing-cham-
ing, as is well understood.”
The claims were as follows :
“ 1. An incandescing conductor for an electric lamp,
of carbonized ﬁbrous or textile material and of an arch
or horse-shape shape, substantially as hereinbefore set
forth.”
“ 2. The combination, substantially as hereinbefore
set forth, of an electric circuit and an incandescing
conductor of carbonized ﬁbrous material, included in
and forming part of said circuit, and a transparent her-
metically-sealed chamber in which the conductor is in-
closed.”
“ 3. The incandescing conductor for an electric lamp,
formed of carbonized paper, substantially as described.”
“ 4. An incandescing electric lamp consisting of the
following elements in combination : ﬁrst, an illumi—
nating chamber made wholly of glass hermetically
sealed, and out of which all carbon-consuming gas has
been exhausted or driven; second, an electric-circuit
conductor passing through the glass wall of said cham-
ber and hermetically sealed therein, as described ;
third, an illuminating conductor in said circuit, and
forming part thereof within said chamber, consisting
of carbon made from a ﬁbrous or textile material, hav-
ing the form of an arch or loop, substantially as cle-
scribed, for the purpose speciﬁed.”
5
The commercial Edison lamp used by the appellee,
and which is illustrated below, is composed of a burner,
A, made of carbonized bamboo of a peculiar quality
discovered by Mr. Edison to be highly useful for the
purpose, and having a length of about six inches, a
diameter of about ﬁve one thousandths of an inch, and
an electrical resistance of upwards of 100 ohms. This
ﬁlament of carbon is bent into the form of a loop, and
its ends are secured by good electrical and mechanical
connections to two ﬁne platinum wires B B. These
wires pass through a glass stem, C, the glass being
melted and fused upon the platinum wires. A glass
globe, D is fused to the glass stem C. This glass globe
has originally attached to it, at the point 01, a glass
tube, by means of which a connection is made with
highly organized and reﬁned exhausting apparatus,
which produces in the globe a high vacuum, whereupon
the glass tube is melted off by a ﬂame, and the globe
is closed by the fusion of the glass at the point (Z.


6
Upon a hearing in the Circuit Court before Mr.
Justice BRADLEY upon pleadings and proofs, the court
held the patent to be invalid, and dismissed the bill.
(40 Fed. Rep. 21.) Thereupon complainant appealed
to this court.
Mr. Justice BROWN delivered the opinion of the
Court.
In order to obtain a complete understanding of the
scope of the Sawyer and Man patent, it is desirable to
consider brieﬂy the state of the art at the time the ap—
plication was originally made, which was in January
1880.
Two general forms of electric illumination had for
many years been the subject of experiments more or
less successful, one of which was known as the are
light, produced by the passage of a current of elec-
tricity between the points of two carbon pencils, placed
end to end, and slightly separated from each other.
In its passage from one point to the other through the
air, the electric current took the form of an arc, and
gave the name to the light. This form of light had
been produced by Sir Humphrey Davy as early as
1810, and by successive improvements in the carbon
pencils and in their relative adjustment to each other,
had come into general use as a means of lighting
streets, halls, and other large spaces ; but by reason of
its intensity, the uncertain and ﬂickering character of
the light, and the rapid consumption of the carbon
pencils, it was wholly unﬁtted for domestic use. The
second form of illumination is what is known as the in-
candescent system, and consists generally in the pas-
sage of a current of electricity through a continuous
strip or piece of refractory material, which is a con-
ductor of electricity, but a poor conductor—in other
words, a conductor offering a considerable resistance
to the ﬂow of the current through it. It was dis-
covered early in this ,century that various substances
might be heated to a white heat by passing a sufﬁ-
ciently strong current of electricity through them. The
7
production of a light in this way does not in any man-
ner depend upon the consumption or wearing away of
the conductor, as it does in the are light. A third
system was a combination of the two others, but it
never seems to have come into general use, and is un-
important in giving a history of the art.
For many years prior to 1880, experiments had been
made by a large number of persons, in various countries,
with a view to the production of an incandescent light
which could be made available for domestic purposes,
and could compete with gas in the matter of expense.
Owing partly to a failure to ﬁnd a proper material, which
should burn but not consume, partly to the difﬁculty of
obtaining a perfect vacuum in the globe in which the
light was suspended, and partly to a misapprehension
of the true principle of incandescent lighting, these ex-
periments had not been attended with success ;
Although it has been demonstrated as early as 1845
that, whatever material was used, the conductor must
be enclosed in an air-tight bulb, to prevent it from
being consumed by the oxygen in the atmosphere. The
chief difﬁculty was that the carbon burners were sub-
ject to a rapid disintegration or evaporation, which
electricians assumed was due to the disrupting action
of the electric current, and, hence, the conclusion was
reached that carbon contained in itself the elements of
its own destruction, and was not a suitable material for
the burner of an incandescent lamp.
It is admitted that the lamp described in the Sawyer
and Mann patents is no longer in use, and was never a
commercial success ; that it does not embody the prin-
ciple of high resistance with a small illuminating sur-
face ; that it does not have the ﬁlament burner of the
modern incandescent lamp ; that the lamp chamber is
defective, and that the lamp manufactured by the com-
plainant and put upon the market is substantially the
Edison lamp ; but it is said that, in the conductor used
by Edison (a particular part of the stem of the bamboo
lying directly beneath the silicious cuticle, the peculiar
8
ﬁtness for which purpose was undoubtedly discovered
by him,) he made use of a ﬁbrous or textile material,
covered by the patent to Sawyer and Man, and is,
therefore, an infringer. It was admitted, however, that
the third claim—for a conductor of carbonized paper-—
was not infringed.
The two main defences to this patent are (1) that it
is defective upon its face, in attempting to monopolize
the use of all ﬁbrous and textile materials for the pur-
pose of electric illumination ; and (2) that Sawyer and
Mann were not in fact the ﬁrst to discover that these
were better adapted than mineral carbons to such pur-
poses.
Is the complainant entitled to a monopoly of all
ﬁbrous and textile materials for incandescent con-
ductors? If the patentees had discovered in ﬁbrous
and textile substances a quality common to them all,
or to them generally, as distinguishing them from other
materials, such as minerals, &c., and such quality or
characteristic adapted them peculiarly to incandescent
conductors, such claim might not be too broad. If,
for instance, minerals or porcelains had always been
used for a particular purpose, and a person should
take out a patent for a similar article of wood, and
woods generally were adapted to that purpose, the
claim might not be too broad, though defendant used
wood of a different kind from that of the patentee.
But if woods generally were not adapted to the pur-
pose, and yet the patentee had discovered a wood pos-
sessing certain qualities, which gave it a peculiar ﬁt-
ness for such purpose, it would not constitute an
infringement for another to discover and use a different
kind of wood, which was found to contain similar or
superior qualities. The present case is an apt illustra-
tion of this principle. Sawyer and Man supposed
they had discovered in carbonized paper the best ma-
terial for an incandescent conductor. Instead of con-
ﬁning themselves to carbonized paper, as they might
properly have done, and in fact did in their third claim,
9
they made a broad claim for every ﬁbrous or textile
material, when in fact an examination of over six thou-
sand vegetable growths showed that none of them
possessed the peculiar qualities that ﬁtted them for
that purpose. Was everybody then precluded by this
broad claim from making further investigation? We
think not.
The injustice of so holding is manifest in view of the
experiments made, and continued for several months,
by Mr. Edison and his assistants, among the different
species of vegetable growth, for the purpose of ascer-
taining the one best adapted to an incandescent con-
ductor. Of these he found suitable for his purpose
only about three species of bamboo, one species of
cane from the Valley of the Amazon, impossible to be
procured in quantities on account of the climate, and
one or two species of ﬁbers from the agave family. Of
the special bamboo, the walls of which have a thick-
ness of about three-eighths of an inch, he used only
about twenty-thousandths of an inch in thickness. In
this portion of the bamboo the ﬁbers are more nearly
parallel. the cell walls are apparently smallest, and the
pithy matter between the ﬁbers is as its minimum. It
seems that carbon ﬁlaments cannot be made of wood—
that is, exogenous vegetable growth—because the ﬁbers
are not parallel and the longitudinal ﬁbers are inter-
cepted by radial ﬁbers. The cells composing the
ﬁbers are all so large that the resulting carbon is very
porous and friable. Lamps made of this material
proved of no commercial value. After trying as many
as thirty or forty different woods of exogenous growth,
he gave them up as hopeless. But ﬁnally, while ex-
perimenting with a bamboo strip which formed
the edge of a palm leaf fan, cut into ﬁla-
ments, he obtained surprising results. After
microscopic examination of the material, he de-
spatched a man to Japan to make arrangements for
securing the bamboo in quantities. It seems that the
characteristic of the bamboo which makes it particu-
10
larly suitable is that the ﬁbers run more nearly parallel
than in other species of wood. Owing to this, it can
be cut up into ﬁlaments having parallel ﬁbers, running
throughout their length, and producing a homogene-
ous carbon. There is no generic quality, however, in
vegetable ﬁbers, because they are ﬁbrous, which adapts
them to the purpose. Indeed, the ﬁbers are rather a
disadvantage. If the bamboo grew solid without ﬁbers,
but had its peculiar cellular formation, it would be a i
perfect material, and incandescent lamps would last at
least six times as long as at present. All vegetable
ﬁbrous growths do not have a suitable cellular struct—
ure. In some the cells are so large that they are value-
less for that purpose. No exogenous, and very few
endogenous, growths are suitable. The messenger
whom he despatched to different parts of Japan and
China sent him about forty different kinds of bamboo,
in such quantities to enable him to make a number of
lamps, and from a test of these different species be
ascertained which was best for the purpose. From
this it appears very clearly that there is no such quality
common to ﬁbrous and textile substances generally as
makes them suitable for an incandescent conductor,
and that the bamboo which was ﬁnally pitched upon,
and is now generally used, was not selected because it
was a vegetable growth, but because it contained cer-
tain peculiarities in its ﬁbrous structure which distin-
guished it from every other ﬁbrous substance. The
question really is whether the imperfectly successful
experiments of Sawyer and Man, with carbonized
paper and wood carbon, conceding all that is claimed
for them, authorize them to put under tribute the re-
sults of‘ the brilliant discoveries made by others.
It is required by Rev. Stat. Sec. 4888 that the ap-
plication shall contain “ a written description of the
device and of the manner and process of making, con—
structing, compounding, and using it in such full, clear,
concise, and exact terms as to enable any person,
skilled in the art or science to which it appertains 0r
11
with which it is most nearly connected, to make, con-
struct, compound and use the same.” The object of
this is to apprise the public of what the patentee
claims as his own, the courts of what they are called
upon to construe, and competing manufacturers and
dealers of exactly what they are bound to avoid. (Grant
'0. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218, 247.) If the description be
so vague and uncertain that no one can tell, except by
independent experiments, how to construct the pat-
ented device, the patent is void.
It was said by Chief Justice TANEY in Wood 1). Un-
derhz'll (5 How. 1, 5,) with respect to a patented
compound for the purpose of making brick or
tile, which did not give the relative proportions of
the different ingredients: “But when the speciﬁ-
cation of a new composition of matter gives
only the names of the substances which
are to be mixed together, without stating any relative
proportion, undoubtedly it would be the duty of the
court to declare the patent void. And the same rule
would prevail where it was apparent that the propor-
tions were stated ambiguously and vaguely. For in
such cases it would be evident, on the face of the
speciﬁcation, that no one could use the invention with-
out ﬁrst ascertaining, by experiment, the exact propor-
tion of the different ingredients required to produce
the result intended to be obtained. . . . And if,
from the nature and character of the ingredients to be
used, they are not susceptible of such exact description,
the inventor is not entitled to a patent.”
So in Tyler '0. Boston, (7 IVall. 327,) wherein the
plaintiff professed to have discovered a combination of
fusel oil with the mineral and earthly oils, constituting
a burning ﬂuid, the patentee stated that the exact
quantity of fusel oil, which is necessary to produce the
most desirable compound, must be determined by ex-
periment. And the court observed: “ Where a patent
is claimed for such a discovery it should state the com-
ponent parts of the new manufacture claimed with
12
clearness and precision, and not leave a person at-
tempting to use the discovery to ﬁnd it out ‘by ex-
periment.’ ” See also Bone 11. Jeanz‘ezf, (129 U. S. 683 ;)
Howard '0. Detroit Stove Works, (150 U. S. 164, 167;)
Schneider '0. Lovell, (10 Fed. Rep. 666;) Welling '0.
Crane, (14 Fed. Rep. 571.)
Applying this principle to the patent under considera-
tion, how would it be possible for a person to know
what ﬁbrous or textile material was adapted to the
purpose of an incandescent conductor, except by the
most careful and painstaking experimentation ? If, as
before observed, there were some general quality,
running through the whole ﬁbrous and textile king-
dom, which distinguished it from every other, and gave
it a peculiar ﬁtness for the particular purpose, the man
who discovered such quality might justly be entitled
to a patent ; but that is not the case here. An examina-
tion of materials of this class carried on for months re-
vealed nothing that seemed to be adapted to the pur-
pose; and even the carbonized paper and wood car-
bons speciﬁed in the patent, experiments with which
ﬁrst suggest their incorporation therein, were found to
be so inferior to the bamboo, afterwards discovered by
Edison, that the complainant was forced to abandon its
patent in that particular, and take up with the material
discovered by its rival. . Under these circumstances, to
hold that one, who had discovered that a certain
ﬁbrous or textile material answered the required pur-
pose, should obtain the right to exclude everybody
from the whole domain of ﬁbrous and textile materials,
and thereby shut out any further eﬁ'orts to discover a
better specimen of that class than the patentee had
employed, would be an unwarranted extension
of his monopoly, and operate rather to dis-
courage than to promote inventon. If Saw-
yer and Man had discovered that a certain
carbonized paper would answer the purpose, their
claim to all carbonized paper would, perhaps, not be
extravagant; but the fact that paper happens to belong
13
to the ﬁbrous kingdom did not invest them with
sovereignty over this entire kingdom, and thereby
practically limit other experimenters to the domain of
minerals.
In fact, such a construction of this patent as would
exclude competitors from making use of any ﬁbrous
or textile material would probably defeat itself, since,
if the patent were infringed by the use of any such
material, it would be anticipated by proof of the prior
use of any such material. In this connection it would
appear, not only that wood charcoal had been con-
stantly used since the days of Sir Humphrey Davy for
are lighting, but that in the English patent of Greener
and Staite of 1846, for an incandescent light, “ char-
coal, reduced to a state pf powder ”, was one of the
materials employed. So also, in the English patent
of 1841 to De Moleyns, “ a ﬁnely pulverized boxwood
charcoal or plumbago” was used for an incandescent elec-
tric lamp. Indeed, 1n the experiments of Sir Humphrey
Davy, early in the century, pieces of well-burned char-
coal were heated to a vivid whiteness by the electric
current, and other experiments were made which evi-
dently contemplated the use of charcoal heated to the
point of incandescence. Mr. Broadnax, the attorney
who prepared the application, it seems was also of
opinion that a broad claim for vegetable carbons could
not be sustained because charcoal had been used be-
fore in incandescent lighting. There is undoubtedly a
good deal of testimony tending to show that, for the
past ﬁfty or sixty years, the word “ charcoal” has been
used in the art, not only to designate carbonized wood,
but mineral or hard carbon, such as were commonly
employed for the carbon pencils of arc lamps. But we
think it quite evident that, in the patents and experi-
ments above referred to, it was used in its ordinary
sense of charcoal obtained from wood. The very fact
of the use of such word to designate mineral carbons
indicates that such carbons were believed to
possess peculiar properties required for illumination,
14
that before that had been supposed to belong to wood
charcoal. \
We have not found it necessary in this connection to
consider the amendments that were made to the original
speciﬁcation, upon which so much stress was laid in the
opinion of the court below, since we are all agreed that
the claims of this patent, with the exception of the
third, are too indeﬁnite to be the subject of a valid
monopoly.
As these suggestions are of themselves sufﬁcient to
dispose of the case adversely to the complainant, a
consideration of the question of priority of invention,
or rather of the extent and results of the Sawyer and
Man experiments, which was so fully argued upon both
sides, and passed upon by the court below, becomes
unnecessary. .
For the reasons above stated the decree of the Cir-
cuit Court is Afﬁrmed.
(True copy.)
Test : JAMES H. MOKENNEY,
[SEAL] Cleric Supreme Court U. S.
[4058]