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''Evans v. Eaton'', , was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, chiefly, that a patent on an improved machine must clearly describe how the machine differs from the prior art. It was the fourth published Supreme Court decision on patents,〔Malla Pollack, The Owned Public Domain: The Constitutional Right Not to Be Excluded - or the Supreme Court Chose the Right Breakfast Cereal in Kellogg v. National Biscuit Co., 22 Hastings Comm. & Ent L.J. 265, 291 n119 (2000).〕 and the second to deal with substantive patent law.〔Harold C. Wegner, Post-Merck Experimental Use and the "Safe Harbor", 15 Fed. Circuit B.J. 1, 37 (2005).〕 It was also the third of four successive Supreme Court cases related specifically to the Oliver Evans flour mill patent. ==Background== In the 1780s, inventor Oliver Evans developed a system for an automated flour mill that would revolutionize milling technology. After keeping his invention a secret while he reduced it to practice, he initially obtained protection for it through individual state statutes, for example in Maryland and New Hampshire, because the patent system did not yet exist. When the Patent Act of 1790 took effect, Evans obtained the third United States patent ever issued. No copies of this original patent are extant. As all patents at the time had 14-year terms, his patent lapsed in 1804, and the invention entered the public domain. Immediately upon the expiration of his patent, he sought a private bill that would allow him to renew it, the first such request ever made. He was unsuccessful until 1808, when the Tenth Congress passed a law authorizing the Secretary of State to grant him a new patent on the same terms as the original one.〔"An Act for the Relief of Oliver Evans", 6 Stat. 70.〕 Evans obtained his new patent the day after the law took effect.〔Evans v. Jordan, 8 F. Cas. 872, 872 (C.C.D. Va. 1813).〕 Under the Patent Act of 1793, which was in effect at the time of the 1808 grant, patents were not required to have claims. In the case of complex patent such as Evans', which included both a general improved method of manufacturing flour and specific improved machines for achieving that method, this created confusion as to the actual scope of grant. By the same token, it also created confusion as to the kind of prior art that would suffice to invalidate the patent on the basis of anticipation. In the district court for Pennsylvania, the defendant Eaton did not dispute having used Evans' improved hopperboy, but sought to show either that the patent only covered the improved method as a whole (and not the hopperboy specifically), or alternatively that the patent had been anticipated by earlier machines. In particular, the defendant introduced evidence of a crude kind of hopperboy that was in use at some mills in Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Persuaded that the patent could only cover the improved method as a whole, rather than any of the improved machines, the court instructed the jury in such a way that the jurors had no choice but to return a verdict for the defendant, as they did. The court also declined to admit the plaintiff's proffered evidence that the defendant had initially offered to pay a license fee to Evans. The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court on a writ of error, and then remanded to the district court after a determination that the patent was not valid unless it was distinct from the prior art. On retrial, the district court found that the patent was invalid, on two grounds: (1) that if the patent was on the hopperboy as such, it was anticipated because there had been other hopperboys in use before Evans' invention; and (2) that if the patent was on Evans' improvements to the hopperboy, it was invalid for lack of written description, because the patent did not clearly set forth the ways in which Evans' hopperboy differed from hopperboys of the prior art. Evans then appealed once again to the Supreme Court. Two of Evans' objections were procedural: that evidence was admitted from the testimony of a miller who stood to benefit from the patent being declared invalid, and that the trial court had unjustly excluded a deposition taken according to established state procedure rather than federal procedure.〔20 U.S. at 424-426.〕 The others were more substantive: that the trial court erred in telling the jury that if the patent was on the hopperboy as such, it would be invalidated by any use of a hopperboy operating on the same principle as Evans' hopperboy; and that the trial court erred in ruling that if the patent was only on the ''improvements'' to the hopperboy, the patent was invalid for failing to describe precisely what the improvements were. Evans died two years before the Supreme Court ruled on this second appeal; his factory had been destroyed by fire in 1819. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Evans v. Eaton (1822)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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