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Anderson v. Collins

122 F. 451, 58 C.C.A. 669, 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4789
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedApril 28, 1903
DocketNo. 1,766
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 122 F. 451 (Anderson v. Collins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Anderson v. Collins, 122 F. 451, 58 C.C.A. 669, 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4789 (8th Cir. 1903).

Opinion

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree which adjudged the device described in the specification of letters patent No. 621,219, issued to George A. Burwell on March 14, 1899, to be an infringement of the fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth claims of letters patent No. 595,696, issued to George J. S. Collins on December 21, 1897. The patented structure is a combination of old elements, and the decree is assailed upon the grounds that there was no invention in the combination, and that Burwell’s device was not an infringement upon it. Both structures are for housings or means for holding the roller elements in roller bearings in proper relations to each other while they are in operation, and for keeping them together in the same relation when they are removed from the roller race.

When Collins conceived his device, roller bearings were in common use. The main problem that was before those engaged in improvements in the art was to construct these bearings so that they would develop the least friction, and many machines had been made and patented in which an-annular roller race between the journal and the journal box or the hub, main supporting rollers • therein, and smaller separating rollers were common and familiar elements. On January 20, 1896, Collins had applied for a patent, which was subsequently issued to him on July 6, 1897, as No. 585,909, for an improvement in roller bearings, which disclosed a bearing consisting of an annular roller race in a journal box, main supporting balls, and separating devices therein. Between each two of the main supporting balls a separating device, consisting of two plates of triangular form, with a cylindrical roller between them at each angle, was so placed that when the wheel was in operation the balls could not touch each other, and there was no sliding contact among any of the parts, save only the trunnions of two of the little cylinders, which were extended so that their en'ds might come in contact with the side walls of the roller race, and thus prevent any sliding contact of the triangular plates therewith. This patent shows another separator, which consists of two cylindrical rollers, engaged at their ends with parallel side members and two small balls placed between the cylinders and their plates and the inner circumferential wall of the journal box. But in the structures shown in this patent the main supporting balls and the separating devices were not held together in any fixed relation to each other, and hence they could not be kept in their proper relation when removed from the roller race. There was no caging or housing to contain them and keep them in place.

The desideratum which Collins sought to reach in the combination of the patent here in suit was a housing or caging which would hold the main supporting balls and the cylinders or rollers which separated [453]*453them in such a relation to each other and the cage that when in operation there would be no sliding friction between any of the walls of the roller race and any of its contents, that the balls and the separating devices should have a rolling, and not a sliding, contact, and that all the contents of the roller race could be removed bodily therefrom without disturbing their fixed relations to each other. He says in his specification:

“My present invention relates more particularly to means for connecting the several separating devices, and also means whereby all the roller elements are rotatably held in a housing, and are thus capable of being bodily removed from the journal simultaneously without disturbing the relative position of said roller elements.”

Figures 4 and 5 accompanying the specification, and claims 8 and 10 of this patent, which are fair samples of the claims in suit, fairly show the device which Collins conceived and perfected to accomplish his purpose. They are here reproduced:

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Bluebook (online)
122 F. 451, 58 C.C.A. 669, 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4789, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/anderson-v-collins-ca8-1903.