MACHINE. In Patent Law. Any contrivance which is used to regulate or modify the relations betvreen force, motion, and weight.
In its broadest signification, this term is applied to any contrivance which is used to regulate or modify the relations between force. motion, and weight. " The term machino includes every me chanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or result." 15 How. 267.
What are sometimes called the simple machines are six in number : the lever, the pulley, the wheel and naxle, the wedge, the screw, and the inclined plane. These are sometimes known as the mechanical powers, though neither these nor any other n3achi nery can ever constitute or create power. They can only economize, control, direct, and render it useful.
Machines, as generally seen and under stood, are compounded of these simple ma chines in some of their shapes and modifi oations. Such a combination as, when in
operation, will produce some specific final result, is regarded as an entire machine. It is so treated in the patent law ; for, although a new machine, or a new improvement of a machine, is an invention, and although only one invention can be included in a single patent, still, several different contrivances each of which is in one sense a machine may all be separately claimed in a single patent, provided they all contribute to im pros e or to constitute one machine and are intended to produce a single ultimate result; and a new combination of machines is patent able whether the machines themselves be new or old. 3 Wash. C. C. 69 ; 1 Stor. C. C. 273, 568 ; 2 id. 609 ; 1 Mas. C. C. 474; 1 Sumn. C. C. 482 ; 3 Wheat. 454.