103 F. 875 | 6th Cir. | 1900
having made the foregoing statement of the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
By his bill in this case, the plaintiff complained of the infringement of both of the patents first mentioned in the preceding statement as having been originally owned by both parties, and of which he holds the license to.use the defendant’s one-half interest. But the plaintiff has since then apparently ignored the first patent, and now seeks for the establishment of the rights claimed by him under the second patent, No. 408,193. We shall, therefore, in dealing with the case, proceed upon a comparison of the invention embodied in the second of the patents to Ridgely and Smith, with the inventions covered by the two later Ridgely patents. There can be no doubt that a licensee may sue the patentee, who has granted the license, for infringing the patent within the field covered by the license, in the same manner and with like effect as though the patentee were a stranger. Littlefield v. Perry, 21 Wall. 205, 22 L. Ed. 577; Adriance, Platt & Co. v. McCormick Harvesting Mach. Co. (C. C.) 55 Fed. 288; Walk Pat. § 400. The plaintiff contends that the defendant, having granted the license to him for a valuable consideration, is estopped from denying that the patent is valid, and we are of opinion that he is right in this. In a case recently decided by this court, it was held that the patentee, after having transferred his interest in the patent, was precluded from denying the validity thereof to the
The plaintiff’s patent, No. 408.193, was for improvements in tools for cutting paper, trimming shades, etc.; and the complete tool contemplated consisted of fhe combination of a head, B, having a receding face in circular form on one side thereof, in which a disk-formed blade, II, was located, the surfaces of the head, one of which is lettered "0,” Fig. 1, projecting slightly beyond the blade and on
The claims in the plaintiff’s patent, other than claim 1, stand on equally narrow ground. The second relates only to the spring device, and the special means set forth therein for operating it, among which is a shouldered shank on the gauge “screw threaded at its upper end, and provided with a nut.” Nothing of the kind is found in the defendant’s structure. The third is for a gauge extending across the head and “mounted in the head,” referring to the vertical shank thereof sliding vertically in the channel of the head. The defendant does not employ a gauge having such characteristics. The fourth includes “a disk-blade having a central bore constructed witb a seat”; that is, countersunk on the inner side to receive the correspondingly formed head of the arbor on which the blade turns. The bore of the defendant’s blade is uniform through its thickness, and is not constructed with a seat. The side of the disk-blade is flat at that place, and so is the inside of the head of the arbor. It may be that this peculiar construction of the plaintiff’s blade and arbor is not, as matter of fact, material; but it is claimed in that specific form in the patent, and in the specifications the description of the blade and the arbor is not general, but of this form only. It cannot, therefore, be claimed that it is immaterial, — certainly not where the patent stands on such limited grounds.
As to the fifth, it is not contended that the defendant’s patents infringí* it. But counsel for the plaintiff refer to certain evidence in the record from which it appears that the defendant, prior to the commencement of ilie suit, caused to be made 380 trimmers according to his new patents, and they contained, also, a washer resting in a recess in the head bored out around the arbor hole; and upon this proof it is claimed that the plaintiff is entitled to an injunction to restrain the defendant from infringing the fifth claim of his patent. In the Union paper trimmer was a washer at the same place for the purpose of holding the blade away from the head and preventing friction between them. The modification of this in the plaintiff’s patent consist