The Law of Diligence and the Doctrine of Estoppel in Interference Proceedings in the United States Patent Office

More than a third of a century age Professor Robinson of Yale began the preface of his celebrated treatise on "The Law of Patents fro Useful Inventions" by saying "The present work was undertaken in the conviction that a period had at last been reached when the Law of Patents could be successfully treated as a department of jurisprudence whose doctrines were derived by logical processes from established principles and not as a mere body of legislative enactments verbally interpreted by the decisions of the courts."The subject matter of this thesis, however, relates to but a single phase of this department of jurisprudence. But just as the Constitution of the United States, written in 1787, has had to be adapted to meet the social, industrial and economic conditions of today, so the patent law has had to be adapted to meet the exigencies that necessarily have arisen with the enormous expansion, in recent years, in that form of industrial property which is protected by letters patent.