Home/Sixth Circuit/Bundy Mfg. Co. v. Detroit Time-Register Co.

Bundy Mfg. Co. v. Detroit Time-Register Co.

94 F. 524, 36 C.C.A. 375, 1899 U.S. App. LEXIS 2377
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedMay 2, 1899
DocketNo. 604
StatusPublished
Cited by74 cases

This text of 94 F. 524 (Bundy Mfg. Co. v. Detroit Time-Register Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bundy Mfg. Co. v. Detroit Time-Register Co., 94 F. 524, 36 C.C.A. 375, 1899 U.S. App. LEXIS 2377 (6th Cir. 1899).

Opinion

BURTON, Circuit Judge.

This is a bill to restrain infringement of the third and fourth claims of patent No. 452,894, of May 2(i, 1891,' to W. L. Bundy, for a workman’s time recorder; and'also the fourth claim of patent No. 305,882, of September 30, 1884, to W. Bauer, for a watchman’s time detector. The defendant is a corporation known as the Detroit Time-Register Company, and is engaged in making and selling a workman’s time recorder, under a patent to N. M. Watson, No. 515,805, of March 6, 1894. Bundy’s invention relates to time-recording mechanism actuated directly by a clock, and connections with a clock, by which the time of the arrival or departure of workmen, clerks, or other employes may be recorded by the employes themselves. His specifications state that his object is “to provide a mechanism by which each workman or employé in a shop or factory, or the like, will, by his own act, accurately record the time of his arrival or departure, thereby preventing all disputes, each workman having his own key, and being known by an arbitrary number, which is embossed upon the bit of the key, and, upon its being inserted and turned, will present the embossed number in alignment with the numbers upon the hour and minute recording wheels, and through the agency of a hammer and pad thereon, actuated by the key, and a ribbon and strip of paper in proper juxtaposition the hour, minute, and the number of the key will be printed upon the paper, and a feed mechanism will shift the paper and ribbon a fixed space, ready for the operad ion of the printing mechanism by the next workman and the recording of his time and the number of his key, as before. Then the Rime’ of each workman is made up from the paper strip, crediting each one with the time between his arrival and departure, whether it be full lime or only a part thereof.” The claims which are here involved are as follows:

“(3) A clock movement and hour and minute recording wheels, synchronous mechanism actuating said wheels, a key provided with a hit carrying numbers, brought into alignment with the hour and minute wheels by the turning of the key, a recording strip, and an impression hammer, in combination as set forth. (4) A clock movement, hour and minute recording wheels, synchronous mechanism actuating said wheels, a key provided with a bit carrying numbers brought into alignment with the hour and minute wheels by turning of the key, [526]*526a ward upon the key, a recording strip, and an impression hammer operated by mechanism actuated by the ward of said key as it is turned, in combination ' as Set forth.”

The patentee does not claim any novelty in any of the parts or elements of his combination. The claims involved are distinctly for the union or combination of all the elements arranged and combined together so as to accomplish a given result, in the manner described. Neither does the complainant insist that the structure of the defendant includes the precise mechanism described in the specifications of his patent, nor that the elements combined to produce the results attained are identically the elements described in the patent to Bundy. What is claimed is this: That both the elements and actuating mechanism found in the structure of the defendant are mechanical equivalents for those found in the Bundy machine, and that they are combined in substantially the same way, so that the mechanical equivalent for each element performs substantially the same function of the corresponding element in the complainant's machine; and that the differences between the elements combined in the two machines, and in the mode of arrangement, are merely colorable according to the rule forbidding the use of known equivalents.

The learned judge who decided this case in the circuit court, after an elaborate consideration of the claims of the Bundy patent in the light of the history of the art and of the occurrences in the patent office, reached the conclusion that the Bundy patent was not entitled to a liberal construction, nor to the benefit of the doctrine of equivalents, but was limited to the specific device described and claimed by him, and that, thus construed, the defendant’s structure did not infringe. In this interpretation of Bundy’s invention we are unable to agree. Our inability to agree with the conclusions of the circuit court results from the view we take of the meritoriousness of Bundy’s combination in producing a simple and accurate time recorder, capable of being used by a very large number of workmen in rapid succession, and without danger of confusion or error. The results attained by him were such as to distinctly mark the line between success and failure, and the rapid occupation of the field by his invention serves as evidence that the public for the first time realized that in his time recorder had been found a practical structure, which accomplished accurately and simply what no previous invention would do. It is manifest from the conditions under which such a mechanism .must be operated, as well as from the results sought by its use, that to be efficient it must be capable of correctly recording in rapid succession, not only the time of arrival or departure, but some number or mark by which each of an indefinite number of employés may be distinguished from all of his associates in connection with the record of his time. But this record must be one which can be automatically made by the machine when set in motion by the workman. This condition makes it of the highest importance to the usefulness of the recorder that the act to be done by the workman shall be single and simple, so simple that employés of every grade of intelligence shall be capable of operating the machine without liability of mistake. [527]*527in the record or injury to the machine. This was the problem which required solution in order to produce a practical time recorder, and this problem is fully met in the invention of Bundy. But it is said that, if the claims of his patent are so broadly construed as to give him the benefit of a liberal application of the rule of equivalents, it will be found that he was anticipated; and for the purpose of limit ing Bundy to the precise structure described by him the defendants have gone very deeply into the so-called “history of the art.” For this purpose a series of patents for watchman’s clocks have been introduced, including the following: J. E. Buerk, August 25, 1865; Anton Myers, No. 117,442, of 1871; L. Aldridge, of 1875; W. Imhauser, of 1876; and W. Bauer, No. 305,882. The general nature of the machines represented by the patents referred to, and their uses, is fully discussed and explained in Imhauser v. Buerk, 101 U. S. 647. The learned counsel for defendant, in his brief, thus describes these clocks, and the limitation upon their usefulness, by saying:

“In all these watchman clocks, however, the recording strip was moved by the clock, and was synchronized therewith, so that they were not adapted to be used by a large number of watchmen in quick succession, because, if so used, they would print in the same place; hut were rather intended for use hy one or a few watchmen at different intervals of time. In other words, there was no paper feed after each operation.”

It is (rue that in a patent to B. Bocklin, No. 199,181, for a telltale clock, there is found a feeding device 'by which the recording strip is fed forward with each operation.

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Bluebook (online)
94 F. 524, 36 C.C.A. 375, 1899 U.S. App. LEXIS 2377, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bundy-mfg-co-v-detroit-time-register-co-ca6-1899.