Computing Scale Co. v. Toledo Computing Scale Co.

279 F. 648, 1921 U.S. App. LEXIS 1928
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedOctober 4, 1921
DocketNos. 2777, 2784
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 279 F. 648 (Computing Scale Co. v. Toledo Computing Scale Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Computing Scale Co. v. Toledo Computing Scale Co., 279 F. 648, 1921 U.S. App. LEXIS 1928 (7th Cir. 1921).

Opinion

BAKER, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). From this and many other cases we get the impression that patent lawyers are quite generally possessed of the belief that a patent infringement bill in equity, to stop future trespasses and to make the defendant pay for past trespasses, is sui generis. As this is counter to the conception of equity jurisprudence which we entertain, and which lies at the root of many reasons given in the present decision, we proceed first to state briefly that conception.

[ 1 ] Property may be classified as real or personal or mixed, and as tangible or intangible. But the right in property of all classes is one, and consists ultimately of this, and only this — the right to exclude others. When a new element in the material world was discovered, radium, for instance, the possessing owner became entitled to the same rights and remedies that belonged to owners of previously known property. When the government created a new right in land in homesteaders, no statutory command was needed to open the door of equity to receive the homesteader’s bill to stop future trespasses, and to make the defendant pay for past trespasses. It would have taken a statutory prohibition to warrant the court in keeping him out. When the government, fulfilling the intent of the founders, granted to inventors a new right of property in their inventions, no statutory command was needed to open the door of equity to receive the patentee’s bill to stop future trespasses, and to make the defendant pay for past trespasses. It would have taken a statutory prohibition to keep him out; and a statute, stating that he may ask for an injunction and an accounting of profits and damages, should be construed simply as an affirmation of the pre-existing principles of equity.

So all bills for injunction are to vindicate the one fundamental concept of property, the -right to exclude others. When the chancellor has found that the complainant has title, that he is possessed of the right to exclude the defendant, that the defendant has committed repeated trespasses, and that the defendant, unless enjoined, will continue (the defendant’s state of mind can be proven only by the circumstances of his past trespasses unless he has admitted his intent), the decree of permanent injunction is the only adequate remedy, it exhausts all the equities of the bill, and it is final in its essence. It would also be final in time, were it not that usually there is a legal appendage to the bill. Complainant’s demand that he be made whole on account of past tres[672]*672passes, if it stood alone, would have to be followed at law. But equity, having properly taken jurisdiction, draws to itself all other controversies arising from the same transactions, even if legal in their nature, and will not send the complainant to the law side to get his money ; udgment. for past trespasses. And in rendering the equitable decree on the me'rits the chancellor has heard all the evidence and found all the facts that are necessary for the money decree except the amount.

In making the defendant pay, an accounting of the defendant’s profits is not peculiar to the patent infringement suit. If the home- £ teader sues his neighbor to stop the cutting down and carrying away of 1 rees, he is entitled, after obtaining his permanent injunction, to show rhat the defendant sold a tree for $100, that his expenses were $25, and that his net profit was therefore $75. As against the trespasser, who is a trustee ex maleficio, $75 is the true value of the appropriated property, although tire owner might not have been able to get more than 050 from any one else. If $50 is the true valuation, and if the defendant has realized only $25 net profit, then the defendant must turn over Iris profit, and also pay an additional $25. And if what is left of the domain has been damaged by the removal of the trees, the complainant, on proper proofs, is entitled to additional compensation. All these are means for measuring the total damage. The problem is always the same — to state in terms of money the results of the trespasses.

While the principles in the injunctional branch of equity are uniform, > he practice in the patent infringement suit has been disparate.

Under the old rules, the court in reaching the permanent injunction was helpless to control the proofs. Depositions were loaded with hearsay, with immeasurable masses of irrelevant matter, with controversies of counsel, with counsel’s directions to witnesses not to answer, with experts’ analyses of hundreds of prior patents, when six would have been more than enough, with experts’ interlarding of their opinions of facts with their opinions of the law of the case, etc. We conjecture ■ hat in our clerk’s vaults there are tons of paper which were puré waste. We leave it at conjecture, because we have np computing scales on which to weigh the more important matters, the clients’ exhaustion of patience and resources, the lawyers’ mutual infliction of unnecessary iabors, and the efforts of the courts to find the three grains of wheat : n the bushel of chaff. But those evils are gone. Under the new rules, when the chancellor hears a patent suit, as he does other injunction suits in open court, he can and does control tire proofs, exclude hearsay and irrelevancies, restrain counsel, compel witnesses to answer proper questions, limit the number of prior patents, and bridle the experts. Records on appeals now show the gratifying, difference.

But when it comes to rendering the money decree on a master’s report, with attached evidence, counsel seem to be yet at large. Frequently they toy with the master pretty much as they did with the notaries before whom they took the depositions for use at the hearing of the merits of the bill. In the present case our finding on the merits of the patent and the fact of infringement was made in. 1913, and the District Court’s finding of complainant’s title to the patent, the only question concerning the merits of the bill left open on remandment, was [673]*673made in 1914; but the money decree was not entered till 1919, and the review here was not ready for presentation until the current year, imagine a law court, with the single issue before it of damages for established or conceded trespasses, or the value of property wrongfully appropriated, or the value of property about to be lawfully appropriated (a condemnation case), permitting the parties to engage the attention of a jury for five years. We are not noting this case as being exceptionally Jarndyce; we are merely taking it as a text in speaking of a general situation.

[2 | In our judgment the Westinghouse Case, 225 U. S. 604, 32 Sup. Ct. 691, 56 L. Ed. 1222, 41 L. R. A. (N. S.) 653, should forever extinguish in the minds of infringers, caught and held by a decree on the merits, the hope, long entertained and theretofore frequently availed of with success, of escaping all but nominal damages by commingling the appropriated property with other property, by hiding, or by drawing herrings across the trail. Equity will pursue an infringer of a patent as vigilantly as it will any other trespasser.

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279 F. 648, 1921 U.S. App. LEXIS 1928, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/computing-scale-co-v-toledo-computing-scale-co-ca7-1921.