What are some examples of the law in the history of patent law?

The first is by Mr. Justice Strong in Harles v. Van Norman, 20 Wallace 368, where he said: “All the devices of which the alleged combination is made are confessedly old. No claim is made for any one of them singly as an independent invention. It must be conceded that a new combination if it produces new and useful results is patentable, though all the constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was made. But the results must be as products of the combination, and not a mere aggregate of several results, each the complete product of one of the combined elements. Combined results are not necessarily a novel result, nor are they an old result obtained in a new and improved manner. Merely bringing old devices into juxta position and then allowing each to work out its own effect without the production of something novel is not invention.”

The combination to be patentable, said Mr. Justice Hunt in another case, Beckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U.S. at 357, must produce a different force or effect or result in the combined forces or processes from that given by their separate parts. There must be a new result produced by their union; if not so, it is only an aggregation of separate elements.