Page images
PDF
EPUB

t

Opinion of the court.

of many kinds were known and in use before the original patent was granted to Sergeant. These all had frames for holding them in position, some attached permanently to the wash-tub and others detachable. Their prior existence is recognized in this patentee's specification. Clamping devices of many varieties were also old and well-known means of fastening machines or supports for machines to chairs, benches, platforms, tables, and other articles. Apple-paring machines, coffee-grinders, thread-reels, and smith and carpenters' vises had been supported and held in position by devices like in principle to the clamping arrangement described in the complainants' patent. And it is in proof that letters-patent for a washing-machine were granted to II. W. Sabin, on the 16th of August, 1845, in which a clamping device for attaching the support of a wringing-machine to the side of a tub, and in combination with the support was employed; a device consisting of jaws at the lower extremity of the support, with a screw for compression, identical in principle with that claimed by the complainants. It is very obvious, therefore, if their patent can be sustained at all, it cannot be construed as claiming all forms of a portable frame or support for a washing-machine, nor a combination of a clamping device with any and every kind of such support or frame.

It may well be doubted whether a frame with no distinctive peculiarities, intended for the support of a wringing-machine and sufficient for such a use, though so constructed as to be capable of being attached by projecting jaws to the top of a wash-tub, could be regarded as patentable. Such a mode of attachment has been known and employed time out of mind, and if, before the Sergeant patent was granted, it had not been used in connection with, or as part of a frame or standard for the support of a wringing-machine, the new ap plication, without any novel and useful result, could hardly be considered invention. It would be but a case of double use. Besides, to this extent the Sabin machine had reached years before the Sergeant patent was granted, and, therefore, unless the complainants' patent is limited to some

Opinion of the court.

distinctive features other than the jaws at the bottom of the yoke or frame, it must fail for want of novelty if not for want of invention. And this we do not understand to be seriously questioned. We do not understand the complainants as contending that either of the claims of their patent should not be construed as embracing only the peculiarly constructed frame or yoke described in the specification.

What, then, are the distinctive features of the frame, and what are the proposed offices of these features? Manifestly the thing sought to be secured by the peculiarity of form described was not merely a support for a wringing-machine, not merely a standard to hold the machine in position, but a manner of support. And beyond all doubt the U form of the frame is essential. Indeed, it is the only form exhibited in the drawings and described in the specification. The purpose of the frame is also avowed to be to support the clothes-wringer, and the frame exhibits no means of support except the semicircular bottom of the U, which forms a journal bearer, on which the journal of the wringer may rest, while the uprights serve to keep it in position. By themselves the uprights serve no other purpose, and they are no more essential than is the curvilinear space between them, the bottom of the U in the interior of the yoke. It is true a clothes-wringer might be attached to them by the aid of additional devices, but no such devices are disclosed in the drawings or in the specification, and had they been added the frame would have been substantially different from the one patented. It would have been capable of a new use. Equally well could additional devices have fitted the Sabin standard for use in a manner different from that in which it was employed.

Discarding, then, the jaws and the wedge, or other clamping device, as neither patentable by themselves nor patentable in combination with a wringing-machine supporter, or frame, in view of the state of the art when this patent was issued, unless the structure of the frame was such as to obtain a novel and useful result, it becomes evident that the .shape of the frame must be regarded as one of its most im

Syllabus.

portant elements. And if this be so, the novelty of the frame does not consist in its having two uprights standing apart from each other without regard to the figure of the intervening space. As we have seen, if the semicircular shape of what in the specification is called the inner margin of the yoke, that is, of the space between the uprights, is not a necessary constituent, the yoke cannot accomplish the results claimed for it, and no manner of support for a wringer is exhibited. Surely a frame shaped like an inverted M (J), though it would have two uprights separated by a space and connected at the bottom, would be essentially different from that claimed in this patent, because incapable of the same use. It could not support a clothes-wringer in the manner described in the drawings annexed to the patent. A space bounded by right lines is not substantially the same as one bounded by a curve, and unless we throw out of the specification and the claims all that is said respecting. the configuration of the interval between the uprights, we must hold that the defendants, in the use of their device, have not been guilty of any infringement of the complainants' rights. They have used a portable support for a wringing mechanism which has some of the features of that of the complainants, but it has not the U-formed yoke, which is essential to the patented combination.

DECREE AFFirmed.

This case was argued before the CHIEF JUSTICE took his seat, and he did not participate in the judgment.

HAILES V. VAN WORMER.

1. A new combination, if it produces new and useful results, is patentable, though all the constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was made. But the results must be a product of the combination, and not a mere aggregate of several results, each the complete product of one of the combined elements.

[blocks in formation]

Statement of the case.

2 Merely bringing old devices into juxtaposition, and there allowing each to work out its own effect without the production of something novel, is

not invention.

3. No one, by bringing together several old devices without producing a new and useful result, the joint product of the elements of the combination, and something more than an aggregate of old results, can acquire a right to prevent others from using the same devices, either singly or in other combinations, or, even if a new and useful result is obtained, can prevent others from using some of the devices, omitting others, in combination.

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the Northern District of New York.

Hailes & Treadwell, manufacturers of stoves, filed a bill in the court below against Van Wormer et al., engaged in the same business, to enjoin these last from making a certain sort of coal-stoves called "base-burning," "self-feeding," or "reservoir" stoves. These stoves are so called because they have a magazine or reservoir suspended above the fire-pot, which may be filled with coal at its upper extremity. This, when filled, is closed by a cover. The lower end of the reservoir or feeder is left open, and, as the coal in the fire-pot is consumed, that in the reservoir falls and supplies the place of that consumed, the combustion being only in the fire-pot, and not in the reservoir. Every reader, on looking at the diagrams on pages 355, 356 and 357, will recognize the sort of stove referred to.

The value of this sort of stove, which had been in large use in this country for some time, was not a matter of question. But persons were not all agreed as to what was the most economical and otherwise the most advantageous mode of embodying the principle which made the distinguishing characteristic of the stoves.

The bill was founded on two letters-patent; one reissued patent, granted to the complainants, February 3d, 1863, for an "improvement in stoves," the original patent having been granted to Hailes & Treadwell, as inventors, May 7th, 1861; the other a patent granted to one Mead and Hailes, assignees of Hailes & Treadwell, as inventors, August 11th, 1863, for an "improvement in coal stoves;" the interest of Mead in

[merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small]
« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »