A DELICATE QUESTION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1388, 26 May 1883, Page 2

A DELICATE QUESTION.

A decision of some importance on a question relating to patents, arising out of unusually interesting circumstances, lias been given in the United States Supreme Court. A lady, by name Miss Creiger, snapped, a corset steel.;at a picnic, The noise made by the snap was heard by a Mr Barnes, who begged to be allowed to make her a pair of springs that would not breakwilie consented. Mr Barnes, being a skilful mechanic, invented and constructed an improved kind of corset spring, andfor three years supplied these springs to Miss Creiger, at the end of which time he married her. The; question raised before the Supreme Court was whether the wealing of the invention by Miss Creiger was such a public use allowed by the inventor as should prevent Mr Barnes from obtaining a patent. The Court decided against Mr Barnes; but Mr Justice Miller dissented on the following ground:—" If the littlespring," he says, "inserted in a single pair of corsets,andusedbyonlyonewoman,covered by her outer clothing, and in a position withheld from publio observation, is a publicuse of that piece of steol, I am at a loss to know the line between a publio and a private use." On the other hand, the Court probably thought that as a great revolution in woman's dress is talked of, what are outer garments today may be inner garments to-morrow, and vice vena. A decision therefore in favor of Mr Barnes might have created a dangerous precedent.