Edison, Thomas A. (Thomas Alva), 1847-1931; Inventors -- United States -- Biography
"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."
[Footnote 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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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