98 F. 298 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern New York | 1899
This suit is brought for infringement of patent No. 614,752, applied for August 2, and dated November 22, 1898, and granted to one Park and one Williston, assignors to the plaintiff, for an improvement in boiler feed injectors, whereby the final overflow-valve may be independently closed, leaving the steam-valve free to be opened, and whereby the overflow-valve connections are automatically restored to engagement with the steam-valve mech
The engagement made by this notch sliding to place and dropping astride the stud was before made by turning a clutch, having a projection to take hold of, by hand, over and around the stud, to make the engagement. The projection was in the way of, and the movement of it embarrassing to, the engineer. Notches sliding to place to drop into engagement shown, and well enough known, are relied upon to anticipate, or to narrow within less than patentability, the invention; but none of them in such a machine, with such or similar surroundings. Ingenuiiy greater than mechanical skill appears to have been necessary to contrive them into use in this combination, and the exercise of it in accomplishing this result by Park and Williston seems well to amount, to patentable invention.
Park and Williston appear to have made a full-sized machine embodying this invention in July, 1890. One Jacob Huber, assignor to the defendant, appears to have conceived substantially the same thing independently in December, 1890; to have made a drawing of it in January, 1897; and to have embodied it in a full-sized machine in dune, 1897. The plaintiff sold machines embodying it in January, 1898. An application for a patent for it was filed by Huber, assignor, February 12, 1898. Machines embodying it were sold by the defendant soon afterwards. Patent No. 004,233 was granted for it to Huber, assignor, May 1.7, 1898, before the application of Park and Williston, assignors; and their application was granted without any interference being declared between it and the Huber patent. The being on sale alleged is not satisfactorily proved, — not that the honesty of the witness whose testimony is relied upon to make it out is at all doubted, hut no sale is shown or claimed to be shown; and the putting of the machine embodying the invention into the hands of a possible customer by the treasurer of the plaintiff, not a salesman, which does not appear to have come to the knowledge of the salesman through whom a sale would have been made, does not seem to amount to such a putting on sale as would at any time defeat a patent. Huber could not have a valid patent, as this case stands, for Park and Williston clearly preceded him. They did nothing to induce him or his assignees to obtain it, and do not appear to have kept silent when they should have spoken concerning it or the invention. What they did and did not do, or said or did not say, was wholly between themselves. They made application lor the patent, within the statute, the