"A process is a mode of treatment of cer tain materials to produce a given result. It is an act, or series of acts, performed upon the subject-matter, to be transferred and re duced to a different state or thing. . . . In the language of the patent law, it is an `art' The machinery pointed out as suit able to perform the process may or may not be new or patentable; whilst the process it self may be entirely new, and produce an al together new result. The process requires that certain things should be done with cer tain substances, and iu a certain order; but the tools to be used in doing this may be of secondary consequence." Cochrane y. Deen er, 94 U. S. 788, 24 L. Ed. 139. The term process is not used in the patent statutes, but it has been uniformly held that there may be a patent for a process ; Tilghman v. Proctor, 102 U. S. 727, 26 L. Ed. 279. A pro cess may be new though the apparatus is old ; New Process Fermentation Co. v. Maus, 122 U. S. 413, 7 Sup. Ct. 1304, 30 L. Ed. 1193 ; Carnegie Steel Co. v. Iron Co., 185 U. S. 403, 22 Sup. Ct. 698, 46 L. Ed. 968 ; Lawther v. Hamilton, 21 Fed. 811. The process by which an article is produced and the product are two different inventions ; Tucker v. Dana, 7 Fed. 213. The, new combination of old processes constitutes a new process ; Wallace v. Noyes, 13 Fed. 172; 7 E. & B. 725.
Letters patent for a process irrespective of the particular mode or form of apparatus for carrying it into effect are granted un der the laws of the United States. Who ever discovers that a certain useful result will be produced in any art, machine, man ufacture, or composition of matter, by the use of certain means, is entitled to a patent for it, provided he specifies the means he uses in a manner so full and exact that any one skilled in the science to which it apper tains can, by using the means he specifies, produce precisely the result he discovers ; Tilghman v. Proctor, 102 U. S. 727, 26 L. Ed. 279.
Processes of manufacture which involve chemical or other similarly elemental ac tion are patentable, though mechanism may be necessary in out the process, while those which consist solely in the op eration of a machine are not, and where such mechanism is subsidiary to the chem ical action, the fact that the patentee may be entitled to a patent upon the mechanism, does not impair his right to the patent for the process. But patentability of processes is not confined to those involving chemical or other similar elemental action ; Expanded Metal Co. v. Bradford, 214 U. S. 366, 29 Sup. Ct. 652, 53 L. Ed. 1034. A valid patent can not be obtained for a process which involves nothing more than the operation of a piece of mechanism, that is to say, for the function of a machine ; Risdon I. & L. Works v. Med art, 158 U. S. 68, 15 Sup. Ct. 745, 39 L. Ed. 899 ; Carnegie Steel Co. v. Iron Co., 185 U. S. 403, 22 Sup. Ct. 698, 46 L. Ed. 968; U. S. Gansol. Seeded Raisin Co. v. Fruit Co., 195 Fed. 264, 115 C. C. A. 234.
Where a patent clearly shows and de scribes the functions of a certain process, no other person can afterwards patent that process; New Process Fermentation Co. v.
Koch, 21 Fed. 580. Where the process is described with the method of operation of a machine, the machine alone is patentable; Excelsior Needle Co. v. Needle Co., 32 Fed. 221; the product, unless itself new, is not patentable ; id.
A machine is any contrivance composed of co-operating elements which act under the law imposed upon them to regulate or modify the relations between force, motion, and weight.
"The term machine includes every me chanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some func tion and produce a certain effect or result ;" Corning v. Burden, 15 How. (U. S.) 267, 14 L. Ed. 683; but when the effect is produced by chemical action, or by the application of some element or power of nature, or of one substance to another, such methods or opera tions are called processes; Piper v. Brown, 4 Fish. Pat. Cas. 175, Fed. Cas. No. 11,180.
A machine is an instrument composed of one or more of the mechanical powers, and capable, when set in motion, of producing by its own operation, certain predetermined physical effects. Rob. Pat. § 173. A ma chine differs from an art in that the act or series of acts which constitute the art be come, in the machine, inseparably connected with a specific physical feature. The art is the primary conception, the machine the sec ondary. A machine differs from all other mechanical instruments in that its rule of action resides within itself. The structural law of a machine is its one enduring and es sential characteristic. Rob. Pat. § 175; Par ker v. Hulme, 1 Fish. 44, Fed. Cas. No. 10, 740.
Mechanical movements, which are some times called the simple machines, are six in number: the lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle, the wedge, the screw, and the in clined plane. These are sometimes known as the mechanical powers, though neither these nor any other machinery can ever constitute or create power ; they can only control, di rect, and render it useful.
Machines, as generally seen and under stood, are compounded of these simple ma chines in some of their shapes and modifica tion. Such a combination as, when in opera tom will produce some specific result, is regarded as an entire machine. It is so treat ed in the patent law ; for although a new ma chine, or a new improvement of a machine, is an invention, and although only one inven: tion can be included in a single patent, still several different contrivances, each of which is in one sense a machine, may all be sepa rately claimed in a single patent, provided they all contribute to improve or to consti tute one machine, and are intended to pro duce a single result ; and a new combination of machines is patentable whether the ma chines themselves be new or old; Wyeth v. Stone, 1 Sto. 273, 568, Fed. Cas. No. 18,107; Evans v. Eaton, 3 Wheat. (U. S.) 454, 4 L. Ed. 433.