Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Elliott

69 F. 335, 16 C.C.A. 250, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2397
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedJune 28, 1895
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 69 F. 335 (Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Elliott) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Elliott, 69 F. 335, 16 C.C.A. 250, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2397 (2d Cir. 1895).

Opinion

SHIPMAN, Circuit Judge.

The Bonsack Machine Company brought a bill in equity in the circuit court for the Southern district of New York against Henry C. Elliott, which charged infringement of four letters patent for cigarette machines, viz.: No. 184,207, granted to the assignees of Albert H. Hook, on November 7, 1876; No. 216,164, granted to Charles G-. Emory and William H. Emory, on June 3,1879, and known as the “Emory belt” patent; No. 238,640, granted to James A. Bonsack, on March 8, 1881; and No. 308,556, granted to Charles G-. Emory, on November 25, 1884, and known as the “packing-bar” patent. Upon proofs taken for “final hearing,” the circuit court granted an injunction against the infringement of the second claim of the Hook patent, of the tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, and fifteenth claims of the Emory belt patent, of the sixth and seventh claims of the Bonsack patent, and of the first and second claims of the packing-bar patent. After this interlocutory decree, the circuit court for the same district, in the bill of equity of the Bonsack Machine Company and the American Tobacco Company, its licensee, against the National Cigarette & Tobacco Company and others, enjoined the defendants, pendente lite, against the infringement of the same claims of the Emory belt and Bonsack patents, by the use of the machine known as the “Baron Machine.” The defendants in each case appealed from the respective decrees. The Hook invention, which was made in the early part of 1872, was for the manufacture of a “continuous” cigarette, of indefinite length, to be cut up, as it left the machine, into separate cigarettes of the ordinary length. Previously, cigarettes had been made singly by hand, and machines existed which were designed to manufacture them automatically in the same way. Hook’s machine embodied the result of the first known attempt to manufacture a rolled and wrapped cigarette of indefinite length. It was never used to manufacture for sale, and probably never could have been a commercial success, but as a wrapping device it contained the rudimental mechanism which has reappeared in each of its successors. In this machine a ribbon of paper, as it was unwound from a spool, passed over a gum wheel, which placed a narrow streak of paste upon one edge of the lower side of the ribbon. Thence the paper passed into a [337]*337trough, which, starting from a flat surface, gradually curved more and more upward until it terminated in a tube former, and thus the paper was formed into a tube, which passed into and through a hollow cylinder, in which the two edges of the tube were made to adhere together. Before the ribbon was formed into a tube, a bucket wheel delivered tobacco upon the flat surface of the paper. The filler was thus made, and the wrapper was rolled about the filler simultaneously in the same trough or tube-forming die. The French patent of Abadie & Co., antedated July 10, 1874, was issued on October 5, 1874, and describes a mechanism which, like the Hook machine, was a commercial failure. The French machine contained a pump plunger, by means of which loose tobacco was compressed and moved onward through a metallic molding tube, which had an interior diameter equal to the thickness of the cigarette which was to be manufactured, and molded the tobacco into cylindrical form. It also contained a “helicoidal mold, which incloses the orifice of the molding-tube, supports the paper in trough form, and also bends the paper into tubular form, with one edge of the band of paper overlapping the other so that the paper incloses the tobacco filler delivered by the forming tube.” The operation of the various elements of the machine was described in another case by Mr. Edward S. Berwick, as follows:

“The said, principal members of the Abadie machine are so combined that the band or strip of paper is drawn from the spool past the gum-wheel, and past the hopper and through the helicoidal mold, by whose action the ribbon, partially bent against the rounded side of the hopper, is formed into a tube, with one edge overlapping the other, and, simultaneously with these drawing and tube-forming operations, the tobacco is delivered in a regulated quantity, is compressed into a cylindrical filler, and is fed upon the band of' paper during its formation into a continuous tube, the said band being gummed previously, and having its edges finally pasted together, and the continuous cigarette being wound on the reel.”

Tlie paper is gradually folded into a tube around the previously compressed filler, and, the edges of the wrapper having been gummed, the filler is enveloped, and .the wrapper is pasted in the helicoidal mold. The Emory belt patent was an advance upon the Hook machine. It adopted the principle of forming the filler before beginning the wrapping operation. The filler was continuously formed, before it reached the wrapper, in an endless traveling belt, curved around the tobacco by the walls of a chamber through which the belt passes.

“This endless belt separates from the tobacco filler as it delivers it to the paper wrapper and disappears beneath the table, but, after the paper strip has been wrapped around the filler, and the overlapping- edge pasted down, the belt, reappearing above the table, comes into action again, and is caused to encircle the sealed cigarette rod with a close frictional contact, by passing with it through a hollow cylinder or guide tube.”

In the movement through this tube, the cemented edges of the wrapper are pressed together until the paste has set.

It was contended-in the circuit court, and the court found, that a third and unpatented Hook machine, made prior to the date of the Emory invention, contained an endless ribbon, which was drawn through the machine under the paper ribbon, to support it, and re[338]*338lieve it from strain. Tbe circuit court therefore found the thirteenth claim of the Emory patent, which was for “an endless belt and a guide tube, whereby a continuous filler in a sealed wrapper is inclosed and carried forward,” to be invalid. Upon this appeal, it is not necessary to determine the question of the existence of the third Hook machine as a completed mechanism.

The Bonsack machine is a commercially successful improvement upon the Emory belt machine, its main difference being that the belt, which underlies paper and filler, passes with both through the wrapping mechanism. The minor particulars, which are described in the claims which are in controversy, are improvements in the specific rolling and wrapping devices. An open trough, having side guides for the belt, receives the filler, and belt and tobacco and paper are conveyed into a former, which is a tapering tube having a spiral groove extending from one of the side guides to the end of the tube, when the edges of the tube lap past each other so as to form a flange continuous with the spiral groove. The object of these particular devices is to perfect the folding and wrapping mechanism so that the edges of the tube and the tube itself, while being pasted and folded, may be controlled and kept in place.

The invention described in the packing-bar patent consists, in the language of the specification, “in the combination with the filler-forming belt of a tamping and compressing bar, having vertical adjustment, and acting intermittently upon the tobacco,to tamp, compress, and pack the same within the upwardly curving belt at the point where it passes through the packing chamber, and previous to its entering the filler-forming tube.”

The Elliott machine, which is the device alleged to be an infringement, is described in reissued letters patent No.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Elliott
73 F. 834 (Second Circuit, 1896)
Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Underwood
73 F. 206 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern North Carolina, 1896)
Smith v. Hamilton
70 F. 238 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Vermont, 1895)
Bonsack Mach. Co. v. Smith
70 F. 383 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western North Carolina, 1895)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
69 F. 335, 16 C.C.A. 250, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2397, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bonsack-mach-co-v-elliott-ca2-1895.