Home/U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Middle Pennsylvania/Davis-Colby Ore Roaster Co. v. Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co.

Davis-Colby Ore Roaster Co. v. Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co.

128 F. 453, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 4684
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Middle Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 15, 1904
DocketNo. 2
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 128 F. 453 (Davis-Colby Ore Roaster Co. v. Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Middle Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Davis-Colby Ore Roaster Co. v. Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co., 128 F. 453, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 4684 (circtmdpa 1904).

Opinion

ARCHBARD, District Judge.

The structure which is the subject of this litigation is what is known as an “ore roaster,” designed for expelling the sulphur from iron ore preliminary to smelting. Some [454]*454ores'have'no sulphur, but others are seriously impregnated with it; and/this is particularly true of that obtained from the famous Cornwall banks, near Lebanon, Pa.,' from which it has been the problem of a hundred years to successfully eliminate it. The complainants are the owners of three patents which are concerned with this subject — two issued to R. C. Greer in April and November, 1893, and one to O. W. Davis, Jr., in May, 1894. Under these patents they undertook to erect at Lebanon in 1895, for the defendant company, who wérp operating the Colebrook furnaces there, an ore roaster with a capacity of 100 tons daily, guarantied to roast down the sulphur to six-tenths- of 1 per cent.. This roaster did not work successfully at first, but was made to do so in the end, although there is some question whether this was not the result of favoring it with large-sized ore. In order to overcome, however, existing difficulties, permission was obtained to rebuild certain parts of it, and plans for this purpose were submittéd; and whatever lack of success there was, or whatever was the cause of it, the defendant company appear to have been sufficiently satisfied to ask for a proposition looking to the erection of a plant of five roasters at Scranton, Pa., where their principal works then were, in response to whicjh the complainants made suggestions as to further changes which seemed to be desirable. But when it was found that a royalty of $1,200 for each roaster would be required, Mr. Wehrum, the general manager of the defendants, refused to pay it, and broke off the negotiations; declaring he had never seen a patent which he could not get around. Immediately following this, a roaster was' put up by the defendants themselves, under the direction of Mr. Wehrum, at Scranton, closely following in general design the plans and suggestions submitted by the complainants; certain changes, howevpr, in matters of detail, being introduced, on which Mr. Wehrum at • a 'later date applied for and obtained two several patents. This roaster was subsequently taken down and removed to Lebanon, where if is now in use. The facts' with regard to the original relations of the parties, while given at this length, are not very material, except as they go to show that infringement, if found to exist, is deliberate, and Mr. Wehrum is properly joined as a defendant on account of his individual participation in it.

' -.The roasting furnace which is the subject of the two Greer patents is, made up of three vertical chambers, each coextensive with the other fwo, the center one being designe'd to hold the ore to.be roasted; and having openings at several points into each of the others, the combustion chamber on the one side being fed from below with fuel gas intermixed with air ip insure combustion, and the heat and flame being drawn therefrom through the ore by means of the openings provided for the purpose 'and the draft obtained from the stack chamber on the other; the sulphur being expelled from the ore and carried off in the process. In the first Greer.-the form of the furnace shown — although none is specified — is circular and the' chambers annular; -but in the second Greer, as in the, defendants’ structure, the chambers are rectangular. The' latter construction is shown ■ in the" following diagram's taken from the second patent; one being'an -elevation in section; and the other a ground plan: ' - ' ■ .

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Bluebook (online)
128 F. 453, 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 4684, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/davis-colby-ore-roaster-co-v-lackawanna-iron-steel-co-circtmdpa-1904.