CHAPTER 6 REQUIREMENTS AND PROBLEMS OF LODE, PLACER AND MILL SITE APPLICATIONS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Mineral Patenting Procedures
(Feb 1975)
CHAPTER 6
REQUIREMENTS AND PROBLEMS OF LODE, PLACER AND MILL SITE APPLICATIONS
Robert G. Pruitt, Jr.
Attorney at Law
Salt Lake City, Utah

The purpose of this presentation is to emphasize some of the practical considerations involved in a successful patent application.

The mineral patent procedure can be viewed as consisting of three distinct steps: (1) the mineral survey and its acceptance by the BLM, (2) the "paperwork" which comprises the patent application and its supporting documentation, including the office adjudication by the BLM, and (3) the field examination by the government agency administering the lands, including any resulting contest proceedings against a challenged claims.

This paper deals with step (2), leaving the remaining steps to the other expert papers presented at this Institute. Happily, Step (2) is the easiest of the three steps, and is handled entirely within the Land Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the state in which the claims are situated, even if Forest Service or other federal agency lands are involved.

Patent Application Procedures

Mineral Patent Applications are entirely controlled by published federal regulations¹ and BLM manual releases² which spell

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out the steps in the procedures, what evidence is required, and how that evidence is to be acted upon.

The basic and most detailed procedures relate to lode claim patent applications and most of these procedures apply to all types of patent applications.³ Slightly different considerations are involved with placer claim applications⁴ and mill site claim applications.⁵

Despite nearly a century of practice in the field of mineral patent applications, there are today virtually no recognized or official forms for use by the applicant in making an application for a mineral patent.⁶ Oftimes a lengthy letter, accompanied by the proper supporting documents, will suffice. Certain of the supporting documents must be in affidavit form, but there are few approved forms to consult — compliance with the requirements of the federal regulations is the ultimate test, much like following the recipe in a cookbook.

Different Types of Patent Applications

Lode Claims, Placer Claims and Mill Site Claims all require a slightly different form of mineral patent application — at least the considerations are slightly different, so the supporting documents, their emphasis and content, must vary to meet these different circumstances.

All mineral patent applications undergo certain routine procedures regardless of the type of claim involved:

(a) Evidence that the claim is a proper location, initiated and held in compliance with applicable laws.

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(b) Evidence of the passage of good title to the applicant.

(c) Proof of public notification of the patent proceedings, by conspicuously posting a notice on each claim and publishing a notice in a local newspaper for sixty (60) consecutive days after the patent application is filed.

(d) Proof of the required actual discovery of a locatable and demonstrably valuable mineral deposit within each claim (or actual use for milling purposes in the case of an independent mill site; see below)

(e) Payment of a small charge based on the acreage of the claims being patented, plus a filing fee for the application and the cost of publishing the required notices.

Any number of contiguous claims may be included in a single patent application by the same owner-applicant.⁷ Each patent application must be filed in duplicate, accompanied by a non-refundable fee of $25.00.⁸ If the claims lie in more than one "district" (i.e., State), duplicate applications must be filed in each land office.⁹ The applicant will also be required to pay any charge for publishing the required public notices.

Lode Claims. The lode claim patent application requires that a detailed "mineral survey" be made and approved prior to even filing the patent application.¹⁰ The mineral survey (a) identifies the "discovery point" and the center line of the lode or vein

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(which may, under certain circumstances, be imaginary), (b) establishes with finality the precise boundaries of each claim, (c) determines whether the "end lines" are parallel (necessary to the exercise of extralateral rights), (d) identifies conflicting claims and the area of each such conflict, and lastly (e) usually identifies the required $500.00 worth of "patent improvements". For a lode claim, the approved mineral survey is a very big step indeed, and often the most expensive step in the entire procedure.

Lode Claims located prior to August 13, 1954 may carry rights to Leasing Act Minerals after patent is issued; claims located or perfected after that date do not carry rights to Leasing Act Minerals known or believed to exist in the lands.¹¹ Owners of lode claims, particularly uranium claims, located after August 1, 1946 must furnish an affidavit stating whether the claimant participated, directly or indirectly, in the "Atomic Bomb Project" and, if so, the facts of such participation and whether he acquired any information relating to deposits of fissionable materials.¹² Lode claims require a payment of $5.00 per acre or fraction thereof,¹³ in addition to the $25.00 application fee.

Placer Claims. If a placer claim is located in strict conformity with the already surveyed land net work, so that each claim can be described by aliquot parts of a surveyed section or sections, no mineral survey is required.¹⁴ If not, a full fledged mineral survey, with all of the various expensive and time consuming steps, including approval by the BLM is required.

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Association placer claims, which range in size from anything over 20 acres up to a maximum of 160 acres in size,¹⁵ require a showing that the locators were actual persons and bonafide locators sufficient in number to hold the size of claim in question. Usually an affidavit to this effect will suffice for the mineral patent application. In addition, placer claims are subject to the "10-acre rule", under which placer mineral character must be demonstrated for each 10-acre part of a claim, or that 10-acres part will be deleted from the claim when the patent is issued.¹⁶ Known lodes or veins (or conflicting lode claims validly located) must be excluded from each placer claim.¹⁷ Placer claims require payment of $2.50 per acre or fraction thereof,¹⁸ in addition to the $25.00 application fee.

Mill Site Claims. The owner of each lode or placer claim may, in the same patent application or by independent application, apply to patent a mill site claim up to 5 acres in size as an appurtenance to each lode or placer claim.¹⁹ Or, if a party owns an actual quartz mill or reduction works situated upon one or more 5-acre mill site claim, even though he owns no associated lode or placer claims, he may apply for a patent.²⁰

Mill Site claims may be any reasonably compact size not exceeding 5 acres each and must be located on a non-contiguous, non-mineral ground. Mill site...