number of persons to whom its use is known." Rather: "If an inventor, having made his device, gives or sells it to another, to be used by the donee or vendee without limitation or restriction or injunction of secrecy and it is so used, such use is public even though the use and knowledge of the use may be confined to one person." It is a public use because "[s}he might have exhibited them to any person, or made other steels of the same kind and used or sold them without violating any condition or restriction imposed on her by the inventor." Thus, the Court treated Barnes's gift of the corset steels to his "intimate friend" (not then his wife) without her first signing a confidentiality agreement as if it were a sale in the ordinary course of business. The majority held that the use here was different from that in City of Elizabeth v. Pavement Company because this was not a good faith effort to test or experiment with the design. Furthermore, Barnes "slept on his rights" for the eleven years between 1855 and 1866, not applying for a patent until other manufacturers had already incorporated aspects similar to Barnes' design into their own products. He did not bother applying for a patent until he came to the belated realization that he could potentially profit from his invention. Thefore, the court held the patent invalid. Dissent Justice Samuel Freeman Miller was the sole dissenter in this case, disagreeing with the majority about the "public" nature of Frances' use of the corset-steels. He argued that the majority ignored the statutory word "public" in the patent law's making "public use" a bar to patenting an invention. Miller argued: A private use with consent, which could lead to no copy or reproduction of the machine, which taught the nature of the invention to no one but the party to whom such consent was given, which left the public at large as ignorant of this as it was before the author's discovery, was no abandonment to the public, and did not defeat his claim for a patent. If the little steep spring inserted in a single pair of corsets, and used by only one woman, covered by her outer clothing, and in a position always withheld from public observation, is a public use of that piece of steel, I am at a loss