MANUFACTURE. In Patent Law. A thrui which is used to denote whatever is made directly by the hand of man, or indi rectly through the instrumentality of any machinery which is controlled by human power. It is also applied to the process by which those results are produced. A com modity may be regarded as being in itself a manufacture, or as being produced by manu facture.
2. The term is used in its widest sense in the patent law of Great Britain. The statute of that kingdom prohibits the granting of letters patent except for the making, using, or selling of some new manufacture. The term, therefore, must embrace every thing which can there be the subject-matter of a patent. See 2 Barnew. & Ald. 349 ; 8 Term, 99 ; 2 II. Blackst. 492 ; 1 Webst. Pat. Cas. 512.
By our law, a patent can not only be granted for a new manufacture, but also fur a new and useful art, machine, or composition of matter. There are, consequently, with us four classes of patentable inventions ; and we therefore give the word " manufacture," -when used as the subject-matter of a patent, a meaning so narrow that it shall cover none of the ground occupied by either of the other classes. Now, all these classes to'gether only
include what is embraced by the word "manu facture" in the English law, inasmuch as 'nothing is the subje,et-matter of a patent with us which is not so also in England. It follows that the term " manufacture ' has a very dif ferent signification in the patent laws of the two countries.
3. With us, it bits been defined to be "any new combination of old materials constitu thug a new result or production in -the form of a vendible article, not being machinery." The contriver of a substantially new com modity, which is not properly a machine or a composition of matter, can obtain a, patent therefor as for a new manufacture. And although it might properly be regarded as a machine or a composition of matter, yet if the claim to novelty rests on neither of those grounds, and if it really constitutes an essen tially new merchantable commodity, it may be patented as a new manufacture. See