Crown Cork & Seal Co. of Baltimore City v. Sterling Cork & Seal Co.

217 F. 381, 133 C.C.A. 297, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1448
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedOctober 16, 1914
DocketNo. 2460
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 217 F. 381 (Crown Cork & Seal Co. of Baltimore City v. Sterling Cork & Seal 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
Crown Cork & Seal Co. of Baltimore City v. Sterling Cork & Seal Co., 217 F. 381, 133 C.C.A. 297, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1448 (6th Cir. 1914).

Opinion

DENISON, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). [1] It is familiar knowledge that, either on account of the injury to the material handled or on account of the breakage of the machine on an unexpected resistance, it has been common in many arts to provide a pitman or plunger which would exert force rigidly up to a predetermined point, and, if the resistance was not overcome, would then yield. The record informs us that this method of treatment has been so common and the plan which is devised for one situation is often so adaptable to other situations that the Patent Office maintains, in its classification list and under the class “Machine Elements,” a subclass known as “Pitman — Longitudinally Yieldable.” Yielding resistance by hydraulic cylinder, or by air cylinder, or by springs, were different principles invoked in the different forms. The conception which lay at the bottom of plaintiff’s 1898 patent, viz., that he could go to the yielding plunger art, of to some specific art, and adopt a yielding plunger as an element of a bottle-sealing machine, was a meritorious conception. It may have entitled him to a broad monopoly upon any use of a yielding plunger in that association (as was apparently secured to him by the first claim of his 1898 patent). That question is not before us, and we do not mean to intimate any opinion; but, however that may be, having had this conception in 1898 and having received a patent, he could not have another patent in 1899 which would do more than cover the improvement which he then discovered. Having gone into the yielding plunger art, and adopted and adapted the hydraulic cylinder yielding plunger into and for a bottle-sealing machine, and having thus bridged over whatever gap there was between bottle-sealing machines and yielding plungers, and having thus incorporated the two arts together, he could not the next year adapt a mechanical trip-yielding plunger to bottle-sealing machine use and then get a valid patent covering any kind of a mechanical trip-yielding plunger when used in a bottle-sealing machine. Yet this is, in effect, his present position, and must he his position to succeed. There remained open for his 1899 patent only his adaptation, not his adoption. Judge Killits happily expressed this thought in his opinion below, when he said:

“But, when Painter patented the mechanism alleged to bo infringed in this case, the art of bottle-sealing by crowns had already invaded the art of yielding pitman, of which the known forms Were many, and had made an appro[386]*386priation therefrom. Whatever may be the merits of his invention, we find nothing in his grant which shuts the door of opportunity to some other inventor to go to the yielding plunger art for an old device of this character.”

[2] Defendant’s structure is, speaking broadly, a reproduction of the pressure relief mechanism or yielding plunger which was shown by the now expired patent, to Penfield, April 22, 1890, No. 426,315, as part of a brick machine. The parts in defendant’s device are the same in number, form, shape, and arrangement as in Penfield (with the exception of the resetting spring hereafter mentioned). The Penfield structure was probably intended to prevent breaking the machine, which was of great weight and strength, when there was a large stone in the brick mold; and to adapt this machine to handling glass bottles required changes in details and very nice machining and adjustment. Whether these changes and this adaptation involved invention, and entitled the defendant to a patent, is a question not involved, except somewhat collaterally. It has no direct bearing on the inquiry whether the patent in suit is entitled to a sufficiently broad construction to include the defendant’s form. It is sufficient to say that, for the reasons we have stated, Painter’s second patent, which, to be valid, must be confined to the general type of resisting spring and mechanical trip which he.shows, cannot cover another type of yielding plunger, the different typical character of which is demonstrated by its development from the older art, instead of from Painter’s patented improvement.

[3] Another feature with reference to this patent requires attention. So far as the record informs us, the lower spring, having the double function of furnishing secondary resistance and resetting the device, was quite new in this association, and it seems to give distinct and meritorious character to Painter’s device, above and beyond the credit due him for devising an efficient form of mechanical trip. Apparently, he would have been entitled to a patent securing to him the use of this double function spring in combination with any suitable form and arrangement of the other elements. In this aspect of the invention, it has been appropriated by defendant, who was apparently compelled to add Painter’s resetting -spring to the Penfield brick machine in order to make it satisfactory for the desired purpose. This feature of the case leaves us dissatisfied with a conclusion of noninfringement, if any reasonable construction of the claim permits the inclusion of this resetting spring as a'characterizing element; but we are convinced that such construction cannot be given without doing violence to settled rules. Only when necessary to make the claims operative, or in case of ambiguity apparent on the face of the claims, or induced by their study in connection with the specification and prior art, is a court permitted to read in an element not expressly named therein, in order to narrow a claim, so as to make valid one otherwise invalid. McCarty v. Lehigh Co., 160 U. S. 110, 16 Sup. Ct. 240, 40 L. Ed. 358. This court has applied this rule, and has refused thus to narrow a claim, and confine it to what turned out to be the real invention, in many cases (see National Co. v. Gratigny, 213 Fed. 463, 467 130 C. C. A. 109); and we have, for that purpose, limited a claim beyond its apparent [387]*387scope only in cases like Lamb Co. v. Lamb Co., 120 Fed. 267, 259, 56 C. C. A. 547, when it contained some general term of reference which was capable of being so narrowed by interpretation without importing an element distinctly foreign.

In the Painter patent in suit we can find no room for a suggestion of inoperativeness or uncertainty which would justify such interpretative treatment. All the 12 other claims of the patent, not selected for this suit, refer to the machine as a whole. One of them expressly includes this secondary or lighter spring as an element, and others contain phrases which might be construed as referring to that spring; but each of these 12 claims is, in other respects, so limited that, very likely, plaintiff was well advised in not bringing suit upon them. In distinction from the other 12, each of the 3 claims sued upon is confined to the “pressure-limiting mechanism” of the machine, and directed only to the pressure-limiting function, apparently with the distinct purpose that these claims might be broad enough to cover Painter’s pressure limiting mechanism, no matter in what general association it was put. The “pressure-limiting function” is finished before this secondary spring begins to operate, and to read the secondary spring into these claims would be to say that a pressure-limiting mechanism, described as consisting of certain parts, included a part which was not named and which had no share in limiting the pressure. This is an impossible conclusion.

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Bluebook (online)
217 F. 381, 133 C.C.A. 297, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 1448, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/crown-cork-seal-co-of-baltimore-city-v-sterling-cork-seal-co-ca6-1914.