Definition
"Mentary" does not appear to be a recognized standalone legal term. The source material attributed to this headword in Bouvier's Law Dictionary concerns the forfeiture of licenses upon breach of condition — content that belongs under entries such as LICENSE, FORFEITURE, or CONDITION. The fragment reads as a continuation of a larger discussion, not a discrete term.
It is possible that "mentary" is a truncated or corrupted form of a longer word — candidates include TESTAMENTARY, ALIMENTARY, SUPPLEMENTARY, or PARLIAMENTARY — each of which carries distinct legal meaning. It may also represent a scanning or transcription artifact from a historical dictionary source.
Because the source material does not define "mentary" as a legal concept, this entry addresses the substance of the Bouvier's passage as it stands, and flags the likely parent terms a researcher should consult.
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Common Confusion
The Bouvier's passage assigned to this headword addresses license forfeiture doctrine: specifically, (1) that any breach of a license condition by the licensee works a forfeiture, and (2) that licenses containing express forfeiture stipulations are not ipso facto forfeited upon breach but remain inoperative and pleadable until rescinded by a court of equity. This doctrine belongs under LICENSE or FORFEITURE, not under any recognized term "mentary."
Researchers encountering this passage should treat it as misattributed or as a fragment of a longer headword. Do not rely on "mentary" as a retrievable legal concept in any jurisdiction.
If the intended term is one of the following, consult the corresponding entry:
TESTAMENTARY — relating to a will or testament; the most common "-mentary" legal term.
ALIMENTARY — relating to support or maintenance obligations.
SUPPLEMENTARY — relating to additions to pleadings, proceedings, or instruments.
PARLIAMENTARY — relating to legislative procedure and rules of deliberative bodies.
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Why It Matters in Research
This entry is a caution flag, not a substantive definition. Researchers using digitized or OCR-processed historical dictionaries will encounter headword corruption with some regularity. Letters drop, prefixes detach, and partial words surface as apparent entries. "Mentary" almost certainly falls into this category.
The practical risk: a researcher who indexes or cites "mentary" as a legal term, or who treats the forfeiture-of-license passage as definitional of this word, will be working from a corrupted source. The underlying doctrine in the Bouvier's passage — that equity courts must act to rescind a license before forfeiture is operative, and that breach alone does not automatically void the instrument — is legitimate nineteenth-century patent and license law. But it should be located and cited under its correct headword.
When working with Bouvier's and other historical dictionaries in digitized form, cross-check any unfamiliar short headword against the surrounding pages. OCR errors cluster around prefixes and suffixes, making "-ment," "-ary," and "-mentary" fragments particularly prone to false separation from their root terms.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole source provided. The passage does not define a term called "mentary" — it states a rule about license forfeiture, citing 1 Blatchford 165 and Robinson on Patents § 822, along with 8 Federal Reporter 223. These are real nineteenth-century sources in patent law. The doctrine they support — that equity intervention is required before an expressly stipulated forfeiture becomes operative — reflects established chancery principles of the period. The passage is coherent law; the headword is not.
No other historical legal dictionary (Black's, Burrill's, Wharton's, Tomlin's) carries a headword "mentary." Its absence from those sources reinforces the conclusion that this is a fragmentary or corrupted entry in the digitized Bouvier's corpus.
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