patentee

lie to whom a patent has been granted. The term is usually applied to one who has obtained letters patent for an invention. See 4‘atent. PATER (Lat.). Father. The term is frequently used in genealogical tables. PATER-FAMILIAS (Lat.). In Civil Law. One who was sui juris, and not subject to the paternal power. In order to give a correct idea of what was understood in the Roman law by this term, it is proper to refer briefly to the artificial organization of the Roman family, — the greatest moral phenomenon in the history of the human race. The comprehensive term familta embraced both persons and property; money, lands, houses, slaves, children, all constituted part of this artificial family, this Juridical entity, this legal patrimony, the title to which was exclusively vested in the chief or paterfamilias, who alone was capax dominii, and who belonged to himself, was sui juris. The word pater -familias is by no means equivalent to the modern expression father of a family, but means proprietor in the strongest sense of that term; it is he qui in do mo dominium habet, in whom were centred all property, all power, all authority: he was, in a word, the lord and master, whose authority was unlimited. No one but he who was sui juris, who was pater -familias j was capable of exercising any right of property, or wielding any superiority or power over anything; for nothing could belong to him who was himself alieni juris. Hence the children of the fllii familias, of the fatnilia, and, consequently, belonged to Its chief. This absolute property and power of the pater- familiar, only ceased with his life, unless he voluntarily parted with them by a sale; for the alienation by sale Is Invariably the symbol resorted to for the purpose of dissolving the stern dominion of the pater-familias over those belonging to the familta. Thus, both emancipation and adoption are the results of imaginary sales,— per imaginarias venditiones. As the daughter remained in the family of her father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. as the case might be, notwithstanding her marriage, it followed as a necessary consequence that the child never belonged to the same family as its mother: there is no civil relationship between them; they are natural relations,— cognati,— but they are not legally related to each other,— agnati; and therefore the child never inherits from its mother, nor the mother from her child. There was, however, a means by which the wife might enter into the family and subject herself to the power of her husband, in manu mariti, and thereby establish a legal relationship between herself and her husband. This marital power of the husband over the wife was generally acquired either coemvtione, by ♦bo purchase of the wife by the husband from the pater-familias, or usu, by the prescription based on the possession of one year,— the same by which the title to movable property was acquired according to the principles governing the usucapio (usu cap&re, to obtain by use). Another mode of obtaining the same end was the confarreatio, a sacred ceremony performed by the breaking and eating of a small cake, farreum, bv the married couple. It was supposed that by an observance of this ceremony the marital power was produced by the intervention of the gods. This solemn mode of celebrating marriages was peculiar to the patrician families. By means of these fictions and ceremonies the wifo became in the eye of the law the daughter of her husband, and the sister of the children to whom she gave birth, who would otherwise have been strangers to her. Well might Gaius say, Fere nulli sunt homines qui talem in Uberos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus. There is some similarity between the agnatio, or civil relationship, of the Romans, and the transmission of the name of the father, under tho modern law, to all his descendants in the male line. The Roman law says of the children, patris, non matris, famxliam sequuntur; we say, patris, non matris, nomen sequuntur. All the members of the family who, with us, bear the same name, were under that law agnates, or constituted the agnatio, or civil family. Those children only belonged to the family, and were subject to the paternal power, who had been conceived in justis nuptiis, or been adopted. Nu/ptice, or matrimonium, was a marriage celebrated in conformity with the peculiar rules of the civil law. There existed a second kind of marriage, call conoubinatus,— a valid union and a real marriage, — which has been often improperly confounded, even by high, authority, with concubinage. This confusion of ideas is attributable to a superficial examination of the subject; for the illicit intercourse between a man and a woman which we call concubinage was stigmatized by the opprobrious term stuprum by the Romans, and is spoken of in the strongest terms of reprobation. The conoubinatus was the natural marriage, and the only one which those who did not enjoy the jus connubii were permitted to contract. The Roman law recognized two species of marriage, the one civil, and the other natural, in the same manner as there were two kinds of relationship, the agnatio and cognatio. The justce nuptus or justum matrimonium, or civil marriage, could only be contracted by Roman citizens and by those to whom the jus connubii had been conceded: this kind of marriage alone produced the paternal power, the right of inheritance, etc. But the rapid 'rise and extraordinary greatness of the attracted immense crowds of strangers, though authorized by law, did not give rise to those legal effects which flowed from the j ustce nuptics. By adoption, the person adopted was transferred from one family to another; he passed from the paternal power of one pater-familias to that of another: consequently, no one who was sui juris could he adopted in the strict sense of that word. But there was another species of adoption, called adrogatio, by which a person sui juris entered into another family, and subjected himself to the paternal power of Its chief. Tho effect of the adrogation was not confined to the person adrogated alone, but extended over his family and property. 1 Marcade 75. This extraordinary organization of the Roman family, and the unlimited powers and authority vested in the pater-familias, continued until the reign of Justinian, who by his 118th Novel, enacted on the 9th of August. 544, abolished tho distinction between the agnatio and cognatio, and established the order of inheritance which, with some modifications, continues to exist at the present day in all countries whose jurisprudence is based on the civil law. See Maine. Anc. L. Ch. 5; Gens; Patria Potestas; Peculium. PATERNA PATERNIS (Lat. the father’s to the fathers). Ih French Law. An expression used to signify that, in a succession, the property coming from the father of the deceased descends to his paternal relations.