The pencil eraser and the court case

Many of us chew the eraser on the end of a pencil. It seems such a natural feature that it is easy to forget someone had to think of it. And the story of who did, and whether they got to keep the credit, is oddly legal.

The patent#

In 1858, an American named Hymen Lipman received a patent for a pencil with a piece of rubber fixed at one end. Before that, writers used separate erasers. Fixing one to the pencil kept it handy and hard to lose.

Lipman sold his patent for a large sum, to a man named Joseph Reckendorfer.

The court case#

Reckendorfer later tried to stop another company, the manufacturer Faber, from making pencils with erasers attached. The matter went to the United States Supreme Court, which decided against him in 1875.

The court held that the patent was not valid. It said that combining two existing things, a pencil and an eraser, in a way that did not produce a new result was not an invention. Each part did the same job it had always done. The combination merely put them next to each other.

What the ruling meant#

The decision is sometimes cited in discussions of patent law. A patent should not be given for simply joining familiar parts. The combination must do something new that the parts did not do alone.

What stayed#

Whatever the law says, the idea was too good to forget. Pencils with erasers are still made in vast numbers today. Lipman's idea turned out to be one of those that belong to everyone.

A thought#

It is easy to dismiss something simple as obvious after it exists. But a lot of useful design is just putting the right things together. The question to ask is whether it made life easier. The pencil with an eraser certainly did.