14 Blatchf. 46 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern New York | 1876
The complainants are the owners of letters patent [No. 61,680] originally issued, on the invention of Alby H. Page, January 29th, 1867, for an “improvement in clothes wringers,” and reissued [No. 5,223] to the Metropolitan Washing Machine Company, January 7th, 1873, in three divisions. The improvement relates to a device for fastening the wringers to tubs of various sizes. Infringement is predicated upon the first claim only in the reissued patent, division A, the other ¿aims having been abandoned on the argument. That claim reads as follows: “In a wringer having a pair of squeezing rollers, and an operating crank, and two uprights or standards, the employment of. clamping means arranged to take hold of the tub at or near the base of each standard.” The defendants rely upon three defences to the action, insisting, first, that Page, the inventor of the alleged improvement, had abandoned it to the public; second, that, if the claim is construed to cover all clamping devices for such machines, it is void for want of novelty; and, third, that, if the claim is limited to clamping devices of the particular character described in the specification and shown in the drawings, the defendants do not infringe. I do not deem it necessary to pass upon any but the last of these defences. In my view, the true construction of the patent limits the claim to a combination of the machine with a clamping device of a specific construction, which the defendants have not adopted. Construing the claim as favorably as its language, the state of the art, and the extent and character of the actual invention will permit, it must be limited to a combination in which a swivel, or its equivalent. is employed as one of the parts of a clamping device. It cannot be sustained as a broad claim for any kind of “clamping means arranged to take hold of the tub at or near the base of each standard” of the wringing apparatus. It is to be read with reference to the specification, and as though the words “substantially as described” were inserted. It is conceded, that all that Page contemplated
Turning to the application for the original patent, it is clear that Page considered the swivel as the important feature of his invention; for, he concludes his description by stating that “the advantage of this arrangement consists in the employment of a swivel or joint, which allows the clamping device to turn, and thus adapt itself perfectly to tubs of different sizes and forms.” This terse statement of his idea is quite ingeniously diluted in the language of the reissue. In the original he summarizes his invention as one wherein “the advantage of his arrangement consists in the employment of a swivel,” while, in the reissue he says: “This construction presents a swivel.” In the first, the employment of the swivel is stated as the gist of the improvement. In the reissue the attempt is to present it as a secondary or cumulative advantage. I cannot resist the belief, in view of the decided difference between the claims in the original and the reissue, and of the changes in the description, that it was intended to import vagueness and generality into the reissue, to obscure somewhat the cardinal idea of the inventor. Enough, however, remains to show that the reissue describes the same invention as did the original, and that the swivel cannot be discarded, but must be regarded as one of the controlling elements in the combination.
Assuming that the patent covers a combination which is the proper subject of a patent, either because a new result is produced, or because the clamping device is new, the claim in question has not been infringed by the defendants’ structure. In their structure, the wringer is clamped to the tub by two jaws attached by a spring connection, one to either standard, having a thumb-screw passing
A decree is ordered for the defendants, dismissing the bill, with costs.