PROCESS. In Practice. The means of compelling a defendant to appear in court, after suing out the original writ, in civil, and after indictment, ha criminal, cases.
The method taken by law to compel a com pliance with the original writ or common& of the court.
In civil causes, in all real actions and for injuries not committed against the peace, the first step WAS a summons, whioh was served in personal actions by two persons called summoners, in real actions by erecting a white stick or wand on ths defendant's grounds. If this summons was disregarded, the next step was an attachment of ths goods of ths defendant, and in oase of trespasses the attach ment issned at ones without a summons. If ths attachment failed, a distringas issued, Which was continued till he appeared. Here process ended in injuries not committed with force. In case of ' such injuries, an arrest of the person was provided for. See ARREST. in modern practice some of these steps ars omitted; hut ths practice of ths different states is too various to admit tracing hers the differences whioh have resulted from retaining different steps of the process.
In the English law, process in civil causes is called original process, when it is founded upon the original writ ; and also to distin guish it from mesne or intermediate process, which issues pending the suit, upon some collateral interlocutory matter, as, to summon juries, witnesses, and the like ; viesne process is also sometimes put in contradistinction to final process, or process of execution ; and then it signifies all prOcess which intervenes between the beginning and end of a suit. 3 Sharswood, Blackst. Comm. 279.
In Patent Law. The art or method by which any particular result is produced.
A process, eo nomine, is not made the sub ject of a patent in our act of congress. It is included under the general term " useful art." Where a result or effect is produced by chemical action, by the operation or appli cation of some element or power of nature, or of one substance to another, suoh modes, methods, or operations are called processes. A new process is usually the result of dis covery; a machine, of invention. The arts of tan n ing, dyeing, m eking water-proof cloth, vulcanizing india-rubber, smelting ores, and numerous others, are usually carried on by processes, as distinguished from machines. But the term process is often employed more vaguely in a secondary sense, in which it cannot be the subject of a patent. Thus, we say that a board is undergoing the process of being planed, grain of being ground, iron of being hammered or rolled. Here the term is used subjectively or passively, as applied to the material operated on, and not to the method or mode of producing that operation, which is by mechanical means, or the use of a machine as distinguished from a process. In this use of the term it represents the function of a machine, or the effect produced by it on the material subjected to the action of the machine, and does not constitute a patentable subject-matter, because there can not be a valid patent for the function or abstract effect of a machine, but only for the machine which produces it. 15 How. 267, 268. See 2 Barnew. & Ald. 349.