CAVEAT (Lat. let him beware). In Practice. A notice not to do an act, given to some officer, ministerial or judicial, by a party having an interest in the matter.
It is.a formal caution or warning not to do the act mentioned, and is addressed frequently to prevent the admission to probate of wills, the granting let ters of administration, etc.
1 Bouvier, Inst. 71, 534; 1 Burn, Eccl. Law, 19, 263; Nelson, Abr. ; Dane, Abr.; Ayliffe, Parerg. ; 3 Blackstone, Comm. 246; 2 Chitty, Pract. 502, note b; Poph. 133; 1 Sid. 371; 3 Binn. Penn. 314; 3 Mist. N. J. 139.
In Patent Law. A legal notice not to issue a patent of a particular description to any other person without allowing the cave ator an opportunity to establish his priority of invention.
It is filed in the patent-office under statutory regulations. The principal niject of filing it is to obtain for an inventor time to perfect his invention without the risk of having a patent granted to another person for the same thing.
Upin the filing of such caveat and the payment of a fee of twenty dollars, the law provides that no similar patent shall be granted to another person on any application made within one ye* thereafter without first giving the caveator due notice and al lowing him an opportunity to show that he himself was the first to make the invention.
If before the expiration of the year another fee of twenty dollars is paid to the office, it renews the caveat for another year ; and so on from year to year as long as the caveator continues to make such annual payments. If an application for a patent for the inven tion is afterwards made by the caveator, one caveat fee 'of twenty dollars is credited to him towards his patent fee, but no more.
As to the form of the caveat, it need con tain nothing more than simply an intelligible description of any invention which the cave ator claims to have made. This is filed in the confidential archives of the office and pre served in strict secrecy. It amounts in effect to a notice to the office not to grant a patent for the same time to another without giving the caveator an opportunity to show his better title to the same. Act of 1836, 1. 12.
See PATENTS.