95 F. 478 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Pennsylvania | 1899
The complainant is the owner of design patent No. 17,235, issued April 5, 1897, the claim of which is as follows: (
“In a design for metallic siding for buildings, the representation of raised brickwork with intermediate depressed grooves * * * curved in cross section, substantially as shown and described.”
He alleges that tie defendant is infringing the patent by manufacturing metallic siding nearly, if not quite, identical in substance and appearance with the siding that he has been making and selling-under his patent for , several years. Infringement is not denied, if the patent is valid; but the defendant denies its validity upon two grounds: (1) Because the design was not new or original, but was an imitation merely, £ynd not an invention. (2) Because, if the design be patentable, it pad been anticipated by P. T. Hardy in June, 1875, — patent No. 163,991 having been granted to him .in that month for “a covering for the exterior walls of buildings, composed of a sheet of lead or other soft metal, having impressed or otherwise formed upon its outer face the configuration of brick, stone, or other facing usually employed for walls, substantially as and for the purpose specified”; and also because the complainant’s design had been similarly anticipated by patent No. 296,647, granted in April, 1884, to-Peter Toglio, fob “imitation brick weatherboarding’for frame houses, made with grooves on its surface, treated in the manner described, substantially as shown and for the purpose set forth.”
I shall not consider the first ground of defense, because I think the second ground has been established. “The true test of identity of
