James G. Wilson, Plaintiff v. Lewis Rousseau and Charles Easton

THIS case, and the three subsequent ones, namely, Wilson v. Turner, Simpson et al. v. Wilson, and Woodworth & Bunn v. Wilson, were argued together, being known as the patent cases.1 * Many of the points of law involved were common to them all, and those which were fully argued in the first case which came up were but incidentally touched in the discussion of the subsequent cases. They all related to the rights which were derived under a patent for a planing-machine, taken out by Woodworth, and renewed and extended by his administrators. The validity of the original patent was questioned only in one case, namely, that which came from Kentucky, which was the last argued. There were four cases in all, namely, one from New York, one from Maryland, one from Louisiana, and one from Kentucky. In the course of the argument, counsel referred indiscriminately to the four records, as some documents were in one which were not to be found in another. The cases will be taken up and reported seriatim, and the documents which are cited in the first will not be repeated in the others.