City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co.

Samuel Nicholson invented a durable wooden-block pavement and, before patenting it in 1854, laid it down around 1848 on a public road in Boston owned by a company in which he was a stockholder and treasurer, with the company's consent; witnesses described him actively monitoring the pavement's performance and soliciting feedback throughout roughly six years of testing. The City of Elizabeth and others (defendants) later laid substantially similar pavement, and Nicholson's company (plaintiff) sued for infringement; the defendants argued the patent was invalid because the pavement had been in "public use" for more than the statutory period before Nicholson applied for a patent. The lower court ruled for Nicholson, and the defendants appealed.