39 F. 268 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut | 1889
This suit is founded upon the patent granted to Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, No. 167,847, dated September 21, 1875, for “improvement in process of and apparatus for the manufacture of illuminating or heating gas.” The complainants allege infringement by the defendant of the first claim of the patent. That claim is as follows:
“(1) Por the manufacture of illuminating and heating gas, the process of which consists of dropping or otherwise admitting in limited quantities, continuously or intermittently, hydrocarbon oils or other carbonaceous substances, liquid or solid, onto the top of a thick mass of coal or other carbonaceous substance, in a state of incandescence, in a close chamber previously heated by direct internal combustion, with or without the introduction of steam, and then, for the purpose of superheating and fixing the gases of said chamber, passing them from said chamber into and through a second chamber, which also has been previously heated by direct internal combustion, substantially as set forth.”
This claim includes two inventions, each of which is a process in the sense that it involves the treatment of materials by successive steps conducted by means of a combination of devices. Each process involves the use of apparatus which consists essentially of a cupola or generator, a superheater or fixing chamber having specified characteristics, and certain pipe connections for introducing air, or air and steam, into the generator, and carrying the gases generated there to the superheater. The superheater is filled with refractory material, such as loosely-laid firebrick, and is heated by the hot gases which are produced in the gener
A number of prior patents are relied upon by the defendant to defeat the novelty of such a combination. The case would have been much simplified, and the court relieved of much unnecessary labor, if all but two of these patents had been omitted from the record. The patent to Harkness of 1874 describes a process which is in all essentials the process and apparatus in controversy, except that the fixing chamber is a retort fired by external heat. The English patent to Siemens of 1864 describes apparatus for converting carbonaceous matter into combustible gases, and for their application to the heating or fusing of metals and other substances. The apparatus contains a superheater which is a chamber in which fire-bricks are loosely piled, to which the gas produced in the generator escapes, communicating heat which will be communicated to the next portion of gas which passes through the superheater. The gas made by this process contains 61 percent, of nitrogen, and the super-heater of the apparatus is not intended or used as a fixing chamber in the sense of that term as used in the complainants’ patent. It is used to superheat a gas produced by combustion, on its way to a furnace where it is/ to be used in heating or fusing metals, etc. The other patents relied upon by the defendant are more remote from the invention than the Harkness patent. The patent to Arbos of 1863 describes apparatus in which the fixing chamber is heated externally, and the gas is made by
It cannot be safely affirmed that those skilled in the art, having the Siemens patent before them, would derive any material assistance from it in devising the fixing chamber of the complainants’ patent. The Siemens apparatus is designed and used in a process of gas-making in which