Benbow-Brammer Mfg. Co. v. Simpson Mfg. Co.

132 F. 614, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 5031
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Wisconsin
DecidedSeptember 23, 1904
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 132 F. 614 (Benbow-Brammer Mfg. Co. v. Simpson Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Benbow-Brammer Mfg. Co. v. Simpson Mfg. Co., 132 F. 614, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 5031 (circtedwi 1904).

Opinion

SEAMAN, District Judge.

The patent involved is No. 535,465, issued March 12, 1895, to John Schroeder, for “means for operating washing machines,” and the claim which is alleged to be infringed by the defendant reads as follows:

“(1) An operating shaft having a rotary reciprocating motion, a cylinder placed upon the shaft and having a sliding movement thereon, and through which cylinder motion is alone communicated to the shaft, and a double row of teeth or cogs upon the cylinder extending at an angle to the shaft, combined with a driving shaft having means for revolving it attached to one end, and a wheel for engaging the teeth on the cylinder at the other; the driving shaft being driven continuously in one direction, substantially as shown.”

The bill and affidavits show that this patent has encountered strenuous litigation with alleged infringers, resulting in decisions in the Eighth Circuit which sustain the validity of the patent and adjudge the Brammer device there in suit to be an infringement. Schroeder v. Brammer (C. C.) 98 Fed. 880, affirmed 106 Fed. 918, 46 C. C. A. 41. The opinions by Judge Shiras at the Circuit, and by Judge Sanborn for the Circuit Court of Appeals, are not only decisive for the purposes of this motion upon the question of validity, but convincing as well of the scope of invention in the Schroeder device. So the right of the complainant to protection by preliminary injunction against another infringer is well settled, and the only inquiry upon this motion is whether infringement is undoubted.

Solution of that question, under this record, depends alone upon the construction to be given claim 1 of the patent — whether the element thereof described as “a double row of teeth or cogs upon the cylinder” is so limited by the terms employed that the claim excludes the element used in the defendants’ device for like operation, consisting of one “row of regularly spaced pins projecting radially from the cylinder or head and provided with rollers,” as described by Mr. Goss on behalf of the defendant. It is plain and undisputed that the other elements are substantially identical with, those of the patent, and that both combinations are alike in mode of operation and function. The contention is that the patentee has so limited his claim of invention by the language referred to that the form, of a “single row” of teeth or pins adopted by the defendant, in place of the “double row” described in the claim, escapes infringement, bringing the claim within the doctrine of strict construction upheld in Keystone Bridge Co. v. Phœnix Iron Co., 95 U. S. 274, 278, 24 L. Ed. [616]*616344, McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U. S. 419, 424, 12 Sup. Ct. 76, 35 L. Ed. 800, and the long line of approving decisions. Vide 9 Rose’s Notes U. S. Rep. 251; 12 Rose’s Notes U. S. Rep. 37.

I am convinced, however, that the narrow rulé thus invoked is not applicable to this patent, in the light of the prior art as considered in the Brammer infringement case, supra, and the reasonable deductions therefrom, stated in the opinion on appeal; that Schroeder had made an advance in the art which was “so striking and meritorious” that he was entitled to the benefit of obvious mechanical equivalents; that the advance resided in “the combination of the sliding cog-bearing cylinder, by which alone the reciprocating rotary motion was imparted to the operating shaft, with the old and familiar elements of his combination”; that “the cog-bearing, actuating, sliding cylinder was the element of this combination which embodied its principle and distinguished its mode of operation from those which preceded it,” and, so used in combination, was novel and “marks a distinct and useful advance in the progress of this art”; that this is the substantive element shown and claimed, and not the specific form of cylinder, “nor the identical means he pointed out to hold its cogs in mesh with the pinion”; and that he is entitled to protection against the appropriation by another of this new means and mode of operation, without substantial change in elements and function. Brammer v. Schroeder, 106 Fed. 918, 921, 926, 927, 46 C. C. A. 41. The affidavits on behalf of the present defendants disclose no evidence of prior art which tends to narrow the scope of invention found in that suit, and the doctrine thus applied, as to the force of the patent in reference to the Brammer deviation in the form of cylinder cogs — substituting two' single rows of teeth or cogs on the cylinder for engagement with the pinion and driving gear, one above and the other below the pinion, for the “double row” described and shown as a unit in the patent device and claim — impresses me as rightly upheld, and it is adopted for the purposes of this motion.

The rule stated in the leading case of Winans v. Denmead, 15 How. 330, 342, 14 L. Ed. 717, has been constantly sustained, namely, that “when a patentee describes a machine, and then claims it as described, he is understood to intend to claim, and does by law actually cover, not only the precise forms he has described, but all other forms which embody his invention — it being a familiar rule that to copy the principle or mode of operation described is an infringement, although such copy should be totally unlike the original in form or proportions”; that, “when the whole substance of the invention may be copied in a different form, it is the duty of courts and juries to look through the form for the substance of the invention”; and that, “when form and substance are inseparable, it is enough to look at the form only.” See 5 Rose’s Notes U. S. Rep. 330, for approving cases. It is deemed sufficient to cite, as an exemplification of this rule, Ives v. Hamilton, 92 U. S. 426, 23 L. Ed. 494; Machine Co. v. Murphy, 97 U. S. 120, 24 L. Ed. 935; Hoyt v. Horne, 145 U. S. 302, 12 Sup. Ct. 922, 36 L. Ed. 713; Reece Buttonhole Co. v. Globe B. M. Co. (C. C. A., 1st Circuit) 61 Fed. 958, 10 C. C. A. 194; McCormick Har. Mach. Co. v. Aultman Co. (C. C. A., 6th Circuit) 69 Fed. 371, 16 C. C. A. 259; Metallic Ex. Co. v. Brown (C. C. A., 8th Circuit) 104 Fed. 345, 353, 43 C. C. A. [617]*617568; F. C. Austin M. Co. v. American Well Works (C. C. A., 7tih Circuit) 121 Fed. 76, 57 C. C. A. 330. All concur in the view that specific description in the claim of an element does not operate as a limitation to the form thus shown, unless it is of the essence of the invention, and evasion of the specified form will not escape infringement where the substance of the invention is copied; that courts “are not to judge about similarities or differences by the names of things, but are to look at the machines, or the several devices or elements, in the light of what they do, or what office or function they perform, and how they perform it” (Machine Co. v. Murphy, 97 U. S. 120, 24 L. Ed. 935), and thus ascertain whether the substance of patentable novelty is infringed. The line of cases before mentioned, which enforce the narrow rule excluding equivalents from the monopoly, rest upon the exception above noted, where form is the essence of the invention, and are not applicable to this invention as construed in the Brammer Case.

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Bluebook (online)
132 F. 614, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 5031, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/benbow-brammer-mfg-co-v-simpson-mfg-co-circtedwi-1904.