NEW YORK BUNG & BUSHING CO.
v.
DOELGER.
191
scraper, or to each other and to the car, and the method by which the scraper, draw.bar, and brace can be easily and effectively raised and lowered from the platform of the car, undoubtedly required inventive skill j but the mere employment of a diagonal brace pivoted to the car in the same axial line with the draw-bar, to resist lateral pressure upon the scraper, if such resistance was deemed important, seems to me the obvious and natural suggestion which would occur to any mechanic. The use of a diagonal stay to resist a strain upon a sled or sleigh runner, and, in general, the use of a "corner brace," to resist tendency to lateral displacement, are within the range of the most or· dinary mechanical knowledge and of common experience, and this is about all that the patentee included in this claim. Being simply for the addition of a diagonal brace to the draw·bar for the purpose of resisting lateral pressure upon the scraper, the only mechanical reo quirement being that the bar and the brace should be pivoted upon the sam.e axial line, and not including the patented mechanism by which either of the three members of the combination is secured to the other, or is made effective, the claim is so general that it does not define the actual invention of the patentee. That is stated in the other claims. The suggestion of the patentee in the reissued but not in the original patent, that the diagonal brace serves also as a supple. mentary draw-bar, was not important, and does not seem to have been so considered by his expert witnesses. I cannot perceive that the mechanism which is included in the fourth claim was an "invention," in view of the definitions of that word in recent decision of the supreme court. Hollister v. Manufacturing Co. o Sup. Ct. Rep. 717. The bill is dismissed.
NEW YORK BUNG
&
BUSHING
Co.
'lJ. DOELGEB.
(Oircuit Oourt, S. D. New York. March 7,1885.) PATENTS FOR INVENTIONS-BUNGS AND BUSHINGs-REISSUE No.10,3GS-PATENT No. 107,473.
Reissue patent No. 10,368, granted to the New York Bung & Bushing Company August 25, 1883, for an improvement in bungs and bushings, compared with patent No. 107,473, granted to Vincent Fountain, Jr., September 20, 1870, for an improvement in bungs, aud held void for want of invention, and not in. fringed by defendant.
In Equity. Louis W. Frost and Wyllys Hodges, for complainant. Henry Brodhead and Philip R. Voorhees, for defendant. COXE, J. This is an equity action for infringement, founded upon reissued letters patent No. 10,368, granted to the complainant August
lU2
FEDERAL REPORTER.
25, 1883, for an improvement in bungs and bushings. The original patent, No. 141,473, was granted to Samuel R. Thompson, August 5, 1873, for an improvement in bushings for faucet holes. It was first reissued, No. 8,483, to McKean, Jackson, and Brown, November 12, 1878. This reissue having been pronounced invalid, as containing an unlawfully expanded claim, the patent was again reissued in form substantially like the original, except that the inventor limits the construction of the bushing to wood. The second reissue is the one in controversy. The inventor declares: "The present invention relates to certain new and useful improvements III bushings· for faucet-holes of barrels, etc., having for their principal object the productivn of a simple, economical, and effective bushing that will admit of the easy adjustment and withdrawal of the faucet without injury to the barrel, and that may be readily and cheaply replaced when worn. My improvements consist, mainly, of a bushing of wood, etc., constructed and arranged, as will be hereinafter more fuUy described, so as to receive and allow of the yielding either way of a faucet, which, when slightly struck, is readily with. drawn from the bushing without detriment to the barrel. * * * In my original specification I mentioned the use of other material than wood for the bushing, a. This I desire now to disclaim, and confine my invention to wood alone, in combination with the protecting casing, b, or to the casing, a, of wood alone, when made with the interior bevels."
The first claim of the reissue, the second of the original, is the only one in controversy, and is in these words: "The combination of a wooden bushing, a, and casing, b, constructed and arranged as described, and for the purposes specified." In the original the word "wooden" is omitted. The defenses are want of novelty and invention, non-infringement, and invalidity of the reissue as a reissue. As bearing upon the first of these defenses, the defendant offered in evidence letters patent No. 107,473, granted to Vincent Fountain, Jr., September 20, 1870, for an improvement in bungs. The description contains these words: "The nature of my invention consists in the construction of a bung which has an opening through its center applicable for receiving not only a faucet for draWing off the contents of a barrel, but also for a stopper, which is inserted from the jnside, as will be hereafter more fuUy described. * * * F is a bush, of the ordinary construction. D is a bung which has an opening extending through its centre, beveled from each side towards the line, E."
The claim is as follows: "A bung, having an opening through its center, one side of which is applicable for receiVing a cork or stopper, G, and the other for receiVing a faucet, in the manner and for the purposes set forth."
Here is a perfect description, in general terms at least, of the complainant's device, and if the word "wooden" were inserted before the word "bung," it can hardly be doubted that it would amount to a complete anticipation. A skilled mechanic reading such description would make precisely what Thompson made. The similarity will appear most clearly by placing the two drawings in juxtaposition.
NEW YOIUt BUNG .. BUSBING 00. V. DOELGEB. 'fHOlliPSON'S BUNG AND BUSHING. AUG. 5, 1873. FOUNTAIN'S BUNG AND BUSHING.
198
SEPT.
20. 1870.
The same letters have been used to indicate corresponding parts on each of these drawings. D represents the double beveled bung, and F the bushing. In Fountain's specification the material of nei. ther is designated. That this patent is an anticipation cannot be successfully maintained. But it seems equally clear that, in connection with the other proof, it defeats complainant's patent for want of invention. Thus, it must be conceded that after Fountain nothing remained upon which mechanical ingenuity could operate, except the choice of materials. If choosing wood for the bung was invention, choosing copper or brass for the bushing would be equally so. There is nothing in Fountain's patent which necessarily precludes the idea of wood being used. For aught that appears from the patent itself, wood was the very material he had in mind. If lead, or cork, or rub· bel' had been named there would have been greater scope for the ingenuity of others. The question, then, is this: Did Thompson become an inventor because he made Fountain's bung of wood? If there were any doubt as to how this question should be answered, an examination of the proofs bearing upon the state of the art makes a negative answer alone possible. At the date of Thompson's application wooden bungs, wooden bungs with double conical holes through them, bungs inclosed in bushings, having beveled openings through the center to receive tbe faucet, iron bushings, and wooden plugs in iron bushings were all old. It was also well known that the elasticity of wood presented a suitable yielding bearing to hold a faucet. With the theater of invention thus crowded to its utmost capacity, with scarcely room for another actor on the stage, can it be said that he who merely suggests the change, in an old device, of one known material for another which had been previously used for kindred purposes, possesses what the supreme court defines as "that intuitiYe faculty of the mind put forth in the search for new results or new v.23F,no.4-13
194: methods, creating what had not before existed, or bringing to light what lay hidden from vision?" Hollister v. Manufacturing 00. I) Sup. Ct. Rep. 717. The mere substitution of one known material for another has been decided over and over again to be insufficient to sustain a patent. In Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 11 How. 248, porcelain was substituted for wood or metal in the manufacture of door-knobs. Mr. Justice NELSON, speaking for the court, says: "Now it may very well be, that, by connecting- the clay or porcelain knob with the metallic shank in this well-known mode, an article is produced better and cheaper than in the case of the metallic or wood knob; but this does not result from any new mechanical device or contrivance, but from the fact that the material of which the knob is composed happens to be better adapted to the purpose for which it is made. The improvement consists in the superiority of the material, and which is not new, over that previously employed In making the knob. But this, of itself, can never be the subject of a patent. "N"o one will pretend that a machine made, in whole or in part, of materials '.Jetter adapted to the purpose for which it is used than the materials of which the old one is constructed, and for that reason better and cheaper, can be distinguished from the old one, or, in the sense of the patent law, can entitle the manufacturer to a patent. The difference is formal, and destitute of ingennity or invention. It may afford evidence of jUdgment and skill in the I!dection and adaptation of the materials in the manufacture of the instru,.lent for the purposes intended, but nothing more."
In Hicks v. Kelsey, 18 Wall. 670, the change from wood to iron in a wagon-reach; in Palmenburg v. Buchholz, 21 Blatchf. C. C. 162; S. C. 13 FED. REP. 672, the substitution of papier-mache for the wire of the frame of a lay figure; and, in a case referred to in Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, "the substitution of wood for bone as the basis of a button covered with tin, " were held, respectively, to be wanting in patentable novelty. See, also, Collins Co. v. Coes, 21 FED. REP. 38; Brown v. Piper, 91 U. S. 37; Roberts v. Eyer, Id. 150; Smith v. Nichols, 21 Wall. 112; Pickering v. McCullough, 104 U. S. 310; Welling v. Crane, 14 FED. REP. 571; Walk. Pat. § 28; Siro. Pat. 31. The case of Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co. 93 U. S. 486, has been examined, and it is thought that it enunciates no principle in conflict with the position here taken. It must, therefore, be decided, in the language of Palmenbu1'g v. Buchholz, Sltpra" that, "although the device may have been mechanically new, it was not intellectually nove!." But upon the question of infringement the difficulties which confront the complainant are almost equally as numerous and insurmountable. In the case of This Complainant v. HoffmGLn, 20 Blatchf. C. C. 3, S. C. 9 FED. REP. 199, this court decided, in substance, that the first reissue was void, because it sought to do precisely what complainant now seeks to do, viz., to cover broadly a hollow wooden bung inside an iron or rigid bushing. The court was unquestionably right in holding that this reissue, if valid, was infringed. To hold, however, that the defendant's device infringes the original or second re-
lILEOTBIO GAS-LIGHTING 00. 17. S:MlTB: .. RHODBS BLlIlOTBIO 00.
19S
issue, is quite a different proposition. What the defendant uses is covered by the broad claim of the first reissue; but the court, in the Hoffman Case, decided that the patentee was not permitted to claim "any form of a wooden bushing in an iron one," but that he must be confined to the particular form and combination described in the original patent. It was further decided that the form of the wooden bushing, or bung, with the double conical opening through the center, was "the very essence of that part of the invention," and could not be disregarded. How, then, does the defendant infringe? His bung is not bored through; it has no bevels; it is not screwed into the iron bushing; the iron bushing has no interior screw threads, and the bung has no exterior screw threads. If the complainant had a valid claim broadly covering a hollow wooden bung inside an iron bushing, the defendant would be compelled to pay tribute; but, confining the claim within the narrow limits indicated, it must be held that he does not infringe. The bill is dismissed.
BUSHING CO. lI. FOEIIRENBACH.
(Circuit Oourt, S. D. New York.
March 7,1885.)
COXE, J. The decision in New York Bung lit Bushing 00. v. IJodger, ant6, 191, disposes of this action also. The bill is dismissed.
ELECTRIO GAs-LIGHTING
CO. v.
SMITH
RHODES ELEOTRIO
CO.
(Circuit Court, S. D. New York.
March 16, 1885.)
PATENTS FOR INVENTIONS-REISSUE-VALIDITY. lJJlectric Gas-ligliting Co. v. Tillotson, 21 FED. REP.
568, followed, and the fifth claim of reissued patent No. 9,743, for electrical apparatus for lighting street lamps, held void. .
In Equity. Edwin Fl. Brown, for orator. Samuel B. Cla1'ke, for defendant. WHEELER, J. The only question presented in this case now, was decided in Electric Gas-lighting Co. v. Tillotson, 21 FED. REP. 568, on the same patent. It is whether the fifth claim of the reissue is supported by the original, and has been reargued and reconsidered. The patent is for an electric gas-lighting apparatus. The foundation for this fifth claim is sought for in tho original first claim. That