abandonment
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 307 U.S. 5 - Electric Storage Battery Co. v. Shimadzu · 1939Most cited · 422 citing opinions
patent
A patent is not validly issued if the invention 'is proved to have been abandoned.' Abandonment may be evidenced by the express and voluntary declaration of the inventor; it may be inferred from negligence or unexplained delay in making application for patent; it may be declared as a consequence of the inventor's concealing his invention and delaying application for patent in an endeavor to extend the term of the patent protection beyond the period fixed by the statute. In any case, the question whether the invention has been abandoned is one of fact.
How the Supreme Court has restated “abandonment”
Each Supreme Court definition of “abandonment,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “abandonment”
Court decisions citing the 8 opinions that defined “abandonment” — 959 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 8 definitions, chronological · 1797–1939
- ORIGINAL
by the word 'abandonment,' I understand a yielding, ceding, or giving up; and, in general, it applies to cases, where there has been a great loss, and the assured, resorting to the policy for an indemnity, surrenders whatever is left of the property insured to the underwriters.
The law is settled that an abandonment, to be effectual, must be made in reasonable time; but what time is reasonable is a question compounded of fact and law, which has not yet been reduced to such certainty as to enable the court to pronounce upon it, without the aid of a jury.
must be in reasonable time
the master, although the agent of the owner until the loss occurred, became, upon the abandonment, the agent of the underwriters. The law upon this subject is well settled, where there is only a technical total loss, and any part of the subject insured remains. The interest in the salvage, whatever it may be, becomes transferred to the underwriters, and the agency is, of course, transferred with the subject.
legal effect
There can be no doubt but that the revocation of an abandonment before accepted by the underwriters, may be inferred from the conduct of the assured; if his acts and interference with the use and management of the subject insured be such as satisfactorily to show that he intended to act as owner, and not for the benefit of the underwriters. But this is always a question of intention, to be collected from the circumstances of the case, and belongs to the jury as matter of fact; and is not to be decided by the court as matter of law.
revocation question for jury
It is the unquestionable right of every inventor to confer gratuitously the benefits of his ingenuity upon the public, and this he may do either by express declaration or by conduct equally significant with language—such, for instance, as an acquiescence with full knowledge in the use of his invention by others; or he may forfeit his rights as an inventor by a wilful or negligent postponement of his claims, or by an attempt to withhold the benefit of his improvement from the public until a similar or the same improvement should have been made and introduced by others.
patent rights
when a grantee allows years to pass after the date of his grant without any attempt to perform them, and without any explanation for not having done so, and then for the first time claims the land, after it had passed by treaty from the national jurisdiction which granted it, to the United States, such a delay is unreasonable, and amounts to evidence that the claim to the land has been abandoned, and that a party under such circumstances, seeking to resume his ownership, is actuated by some consideration or expectation of advantage, unconnected with the conditions of the grant, which he had not in view when he petitioned for the land, and when it was granted
delay in filing an application for not more than two years after an intervening patent or publication does not bar a patent unless the invention 'is proved to have been abandoned
patent law