Opinion of the Court. 263 U.S. deemed it wise, therefore, as it certainly was, to ratify and confirm everything two Presidents had done in carrying on government and making and enforcing law in the Zone. It is in the light of this that the second section must be interpreted. The section confirms "all laws, orders, regulations, and ordinances adopted and promulgated in the Canal Zone by order of the President for the Government and sanitation of the Canal Zone and the construction of the Panama Canal." This means laws needed and enacted to constitute the government, promote sanitation and generally aid the construction of the Canal. It was intended to ratify that as to the validity of which doubt had been expressed. It was only those regulations which rose to the dignity of laws which required ratification. To give the construction to § 2 contended for by appellant would lead to a most absurd result in view of its closing words which ratified and confirmed such laws, rules, regulations and ordinances “as valid and binding until Congress shall otherwise provide." This would be to put innumerable administrative orders and rules adopted in the work, which were necessarily subject to change from time to time as conditions changed and the work progressed, into a strait-jacket, entirely inconsistent with the broad authority of the President granted in the Spooner Act and renewed in § 4 of the same Canal Act of 1912, as follows: "That when in the judgment of the President the construction of the Panama Canal shall be sufficiently advanced toward completion to render further services of the Isthmian Canal Commission unnecessary the President is authorized by Executive order to discontinue the Isthmian Canal Commission, which, together with the present organization, shall then cease to exist; and the President is authorized thereafter to complete, govern, and operate the Panama Canal and govern the Canal Zone, or cause them to be completed, governed, and oper 39 Opinion of the Court. ated, through a governor of the Panama Canal and such other persons as he may deem competent to discharge the various duties connected with the completion, care, maintenance, sanitation, operation, government, and protection of the canal and Canal Zone." In 1914 the President discontinued the Commission, and appointed a Governor. On January 15, 1915, he issued an executive order announcing that the policy of furnishing quarters, fuel and electric current free to all employees was revocable, conferred no vested right upon employees and its future revocation would not be made the basis for increasing compensation. Ex. Order No. 2118-Executive Orders Relating to Panama Canal, Annotated, page 207. Certainly, after this, the appellant can not claim that he and those on whose behalf he sues were misled into accepting employment on the faith of the maintenance of these privileges. Six years thereafter the President made the order here complained of, directing that the charges imposed therein upon employees should be deducted from their pay. The right to deduct from their pay debts owing to the Government by Panama employees was expressly conferred by the eighth section of the Act of March 4, 1907, c. 2918, 34 Stat. 1371. The President's order was therefore valid in all respects. The Circuit Court of Appeals held that the so-called regulation of 1907 in its form and language was only a declaration of revocable policy and on its face was not a rule capable of being stiffened into binding legislation under § 2 of the Canal Act. We have, however, preferred to put our conclusion on the broader ground that the subject matter of the regulation was not covered by the section. The motion to dismiss was properly granted by the District Court and its decree was properly affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals. 74308°-24 Affirmed. WOODBRIDGE ET AL., EXECUTORS OF WOODBRIDGE, v. UNITED STATES. APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF CLAIMS. No. 51. Argued October 5, 8, 1923.-Decided November 12, 1923. 1. Any practice of an inventor and applicant for patent through which he, deliberately and without excuse, postpones the beginning of the term of his monopoly, and thus puts off the free public enjoyment of the invention, is an evasion of the patent law and defeats its aim. P. 55. 2. An inventor of projectiles for rifled cannon having obtained allowance of a patent from the Patent Office, procured the papers to be filed in the secret archives on a statement that he wished this for one year only as an aid in obtaining patent rights abroad, and thereafter for nearly ten years deliberately abstained from requesting issuance of his patent in order to postpone the beginning of the patent monopoly until the needs of the Government for the invention should render it of pecuniary value to himself— Held, that he forfeited his right to the patent, within the meaning of the special act of Congress authorizing this suit, and therefore compensation could not be recovered from the Government even if it used the invention withir the period defined by that statute. Act of March 2, 1901, 31 Stat. 1788. Pp. 56, 59. 55 Ct. Clms. 234, affirmed. APPEAL from a judgment of the Court of Claims rejecting a claim preferred under a special act of Congress, for compensation for use by the Government of an invention made by the plaintiffs' decedent. Mr. Henry P. Doolittle for appellants. Mr. Harry E. Knight, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, with whom Mr. Solicitor General Beck, Mr. Assistant Attorney General Lovett and Mr. Melville D. Church, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, were on the brief, for the United States. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court. This suit in the Court of Claims was brought under the authority of a special act of Congress of March 2, 1901, 31 Stat. 1788, by which the claim of William E. Woodbridge, for compensation from the United States for use of his alleged invention relating to projectiles for rifled cannon, for which a patent was ordered issued by the Government, was referred to the Court of Claims to hear and determine, first, whether Woodbridge was the first and original inventor, and, second, to what extent the United States had used it and the amount of compensation which was due in equity and justice therefor, and if it found that Woodbridge was such inventor, to decide the case as if a patent had issued for seventeen years in 1852. the year in which it had been ordered to issue, with the right of appeal as in other causes-"Provided, however, That the said court shall first be satisfied that the said Woodbridge did not forfeit, or abandon, his right to a patent, by publication, delay, laches, or otherwise; and that the said patent was wrongly refused to be issued by the Patent Office." The Court of Claims heard the case, made findings of fact and held that the petition must be dismissed on two grounds, first, that Woodbridge had forfeited or abandoned his right to a patent by his delay or laches, and, second, that the United States had not used his invention. From the findings of fact, it appears that Woodbridge was a man skilled in the science of projectiles and an inventor of genius and experience. In February, 1852, he filed an application for a patent for an invention which he described as consisting of "applying to a projectile to be fired from a rifled gun a rifle-ring, or sabot, in the manner hereinafter described, for the purpose of giving to the projectile the rifle motion." The Patent Office Opinion of the Court. 263 U.S. advised him that the use of sabots or rings of soft metal applied to iron balls was known for either smooth bore or rifled guns, but after discussion allowed him two claims, the first for a smooth ring for a smooth bore cannon, and the second for a ring with exterior projections to fit into the rifled cannon, for the purpose of diminishing windage, and giving the projectile a motion in direction of the axis of the bore. In a letter of March 23, 1852, Woodbridge wrote the Patent Commissioner, with the claims amended in the form in which the Patent Office had agreed to allow them, and said: "I was informed, in answer to my inquiry, that upon the issue, or order to issue, of a patent, it may be filed in the secret archives of your office (at the risk of the patentee) for such time as he may desire. I wish to avail myself of this privilege when my patent may issue, in order that my ability to take out a patent in a foreign country may not be affected by the publication of the invention. If it is necessary to specify a particular time during which the patent shall remain in the secret archives, you will please consider one year as the time designated by me." To this, on April 15, 1852, the Patent Office answered that a patent had been ordered to issue on his application and, in accordance with his request, the papers were filed among the secret archives of the office, subject to his directions as to the time of issuing them. This was done presumably under § 8 of the Act of July 4, 1836, 5 Stat. 121, which contains the following provision: "And whenever the applicant shall request it, the patent shall take date from the time of the filing of the specification and drawings, not however exceeding six months prior to the actual issuing of the patent; and on like request, and the payment of the duty herein required, by any applicant, his specification and drawings shall be |