Posted on Thursday, August 12 2004 - 12:34 AM - In The News

Two Nashua lawyers have unearthed copies of 14 early patents - including an 1826 patent for the first internal combustion engine - at a Dartmouth College library. Virtually all information about the first 10,000 U.S. patents was destroyed in a July 1839 fire that gutted the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington. The office was established in 1790. In the 168 years since the fire, only about 2,800 have been recovered. No one at the office can remember the last time some of the so-called “X-patents” were discovered, until this spring.

That’s when patent lawyers and history buffs Scott Asmus and Andrew Cernota unearthed clues about some long-lost patents of the New Hampshire inventor Samuel Morey. They followed the trail to Dartmouth College, where they discovered inventor copies of 14 early patents.

“This isn’t something that happens all the time,” Brigid Quinn, a spokeswoman for the Patent Office, told The New York Times. “Our information service people, who keep track of this, were pretty excited.”

Asmus and Cernota were researching Morey, who held the resident, when they came across a reference to the Dartmouth College library.

“We were looking for Morey’s patent on the patent Web site and couldn’t find it. Then we saw something written about the patent in a handbook from the 1960s and went to the library,” Asmus said.

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