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‘WANT OF NOVELTY’ AND PATENT LITIGATION: THE CASE OF THE CYANIDE PROCESS OF GOLD EXTRACTION, 1892–1902
Abstract
In the years between 1887 and 1910, two major processes for the extraction of precious and base metals from their ores, the cyanide and the flotation processes, were developed. While these were very important advances in the technology affecting the mining industry (and are still as important now as they were when first used) they were both subjected to fierce litigation in the Courts. This is the story of the cyanide process.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
The flotation process was important in extracting base metals from their ores. It was developed in Australia. Geoffrey Blainey (The rush that never ended, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1963, p. 271) described these processes as two of the three major metallurgical advances of the last thousand years.
The Syndicate comprised J.S. MacArthur, Robert and William Forrest (two physicians) and George Morton, the finance member. For a comprehensive account of the early history of the cyanide process see my ‘Discovery, development, and diffusion of new technology: the cyanide process of gold extraction, 1887-1914’, Prometheus, 7, 1, 1989, pp. 61–74.
See the Board Minutes of the Cassel Company (henceforth CBM), 21 June 1886, housed in the Cheshire Record Office, Chester.
CBM, 11 November 1887.
See ‘The Australian Gold Recovery Company Ltd v. The Day Dawn P.C. Gold Mining Company Ltd’, Council of Law Reporting by the Queensland Law Journal Ltd, State Reports, Queensland: Decisions of the Supreme Court of Queensland, Brisbane, 1902, p. 130.
See Provisional Specification of Patent No. 1011, dated by MacArthur and the two Forrests on 27 October 1887, held in the Australian Archives, Queensland Section, Brisbane, the date of receipt being 7 March 1888. This appears to have been an exact copy of the specification tendered to the British Patent Office.
See Amended Complete Specification, Patent No. 1011, housed as above. My italics.
CBM, 21 June 1888.
The only case that could have come before the courts, in which the American subsidiary sued the Mercur Gold Mining Company for infringement, was settled out of court in March 1896.
MacArthur-Forrest B covered the use of cyanide alone to dissolve precious metals from their ores. The British specification was amended in 1895 to cover the use of a dilute solution of cyanide (see fn ref. 7 above). MacArthur-Forrest C covered precipitation using filiform zinc and the use of alkalies for the initial neutralising of any acids present in ores (See Gray, J. and McLachlan, J.A., ‘A history of the introduction of the MacArthur-Forrest cyanide process in the Witwatersrand goldfields’, Journal of the Chemical, Metallurgical, and Mining Society of South Africa, 33, 12, 1933, p. 379).
See Gray and McLachlan, ibid., p. 379.
Ibid.
See ‘The Cassel Gold Extraction Company (Limited) v. The Cyanide Gold Recovery Syndicate (Limited) and Others’, Appeal Decision, The Times, 10 April 1895 (henceforth Appeal Decision).
Ibid.
Ibid. My italics.
Other registered patents introduced into court evidence but rarely commented upon included those of Elkington (1840), Sanders (1881), and Hannay (July 1887).
When the process was eventually used at the George Goch and the Metropolitan mines on the Rand in 1895, it was soon abandoned in favour of the Cassel process.
See Gray and McLachlan, loc. cit., p. 389. DEGUSSA's full name was the Deutsche Gold und Silber Scheideanstalt.
The specification of the Pielsticker process was very similar to that of Siemens-Halske, involving the use of a cyanide solution and electric precipitation.
See ‘The Cassel Gold Extracting Company (Limited) v. The Cyanide Gold Recovery Syndicate (Limited) and Others’, before Mr Justice Romer, cited in The Times, 9 November 1894.
Ibid.
Citations below are from the recorded decisions of the Appeals Court as published in The Times, 10 April 1895.
See Gray and McLachlan, loc. cit., pp. 383–4.
Ibid.
See Ibid. The following is based on this source.
See The Age, Melbourne, 29 May 1896 and 4 May 1899.
Miners using the cyanide process were then charged a 2.5 per cent royalty until 1905, by which time the purchase money had all been recouped by the government.
See ‘Saving of gold by the cyanide process’, in Queensland: Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly 1897, vol. 4, p. 275.
For details see Queensland State Reports, Decisions of the Supreme Court, Brisbane, 1902, pp. 123-66. The Chief Justice accepted the British Court of Appeal's rulings, cited the millions of pounds extracted from tailings as proof that the discovery was patentable and of general usefulness and, concentrating on Nicholas's specification, stressed the difference between the use of two substances and that of each one separately where only one was the active substance (an argument also applicable to the patents of Rae and Simpson).
See his ‘Discovery of Cyanidation’, Mining and Scientific Press, 113, 23, 1916, pp. 851–7.
CBM, 11 November 1887.
See Alfred James's hard-hitting arguments in ‘The difficulties of developing invention: the story of the cyanide process’, Engineering and Mining Journal, 113, 1, 1922, pp. 9–12.
Ibid., p. 9. At this time James was an independent commentator. His links with Cassel's had been broken in 1895.
Ibid., p. 11.
Loc. cit., p. 395. Note, however, MacArthur's reward for his invention obtained from Cassel's was considerable: rather it was the Company and its affiliates that lost most from the law courts.