Douglas Pectin Corp. v. Armour & Co.

14 F.2d 768, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1409
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. New York
DecidedJuly 20, 1926
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 14 F.2d 768 (Douglas Pectin Corp. v. Armour & Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Douglas Pectin Corp. v. Armour & Co., 14 F.2d 768, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1409 (W.D.N.Y. 1926).

Opinion

HAZEL, District Judge.

This is a suit in equity, alleging infringement by defendant Armour & Co. of three letters patent, • all relating to fruit products and tbe process for making jellies, jams, and preserves. The first two patents were issued to Robert Douglas and assigned by him to tbe plaintiff, while tbe third was granted to tbe latter directly. No question of title arises. The first patent was granted as No. 1,082,-682, December 30, 1913; tbe second, No. 1,-235,666, August 7, 1917, for a jelly-making product, tbe process covering a pectous concentrate, and specifically a treatment for removing tbe starch naturally dissolved; while tbe third, No,. 1,304,166, May 20,1919, relates particularly to decreasing tbe boiling time of tbe fruits.

Tbe defenses relied on are invalidity, noninfringement, and prior use, based upon tbe following grounds: (a) That patentable subject-matter is absent; (b) public use by others for more than two years before tbe invention; (c) anticipation; and (d) failure to set forth tbe invention in exact terms, so as to enable tbe skilled in tbe art to practice tbe same.

Throughout this trial tbe ease, on both sides, has been treated as one of great public importance; tbe plaintiff claiming that tbe patents have revolutionized tbe jelly and jam making industry, arid that the patents are in tbe pioneer class. Tbe record is voluminous, comprising 1,600 pages and many depositions taken out of court, at the instance of tbe defendant, to prove prior use in different parts of tbe United States.

To make jams and jellies from fruit juices in tbe home by boiling and evaporating tbe fruit or juice with tbe sugar content to coagulate tbe mass, or allowing tbe particles of fruit to remain in tbe boiled, transparent mass for making jams, has been a well-known method for more than a century. Tbe custom of boiling ripe fruits, or the skins and cores of apples, by tbe housewife, which often required reboiling in order to obtain tbe evaporation, so. as to combine tbe [769]*769pectin and sugar content as jelly, gave way, as plaintiff claims, to a more' systematic boiling process and treatment, with tbe result that the product boils more rapidly and less expensively, looks brighter, and is known to retain its fruit color, aroma, and taste — something the old product retained in a limited way only.

The patentee claims to have been the first to isolate from fruit its jellifying material — a substance peculiarly adapted for making jellies, jams, and preserves, which he calls a concentrated pectin. The concentrate is a viscous substance of certain strength and clearness, and, according to the specification, is preferably made of apples or apple waste from which the larger part of the natural sugar has b’een removed, to estop the pectin (a jellifying constituent) from jellifying itself, and forms, without prolonged boiling, a jelly with sugar and water, or jam by mixing with fruit particles. Making jams and jellies commercially has become very extensive, and, if. plaintiff’s product constituted an invention, it became of great importance in this industry.

To carry out his conception, the patentee asserts that at various times in 1909, and the spring of 1910-11, he experimented with apples and their skins and cores, by extracting from the residue pomace an isolated fruit pectin. He desugared the pomace, or ground apple substance, to transform it into a concentrate of pectin, and ascertained that, upon mixing the same' with a variable quantity of sugar and fruit juices or mashed fruit in the juices, and adding thereto a small quantity of acid, when such addition was deemed necessary, that jellies or jams, respectively, were formed. In other words, he asserts and claims that by simply cooking apples or their waste, from which the saccharine juice had previously been taken, and then expressing the juice, a pectin concentrate or extract was formed, to which he gave the name of * 1 Gerto, ’ ’ selling the same in large quantities, as the proofs show, to eanners, and in small quantities, in bottles, to individuals.

The specification states:

“Jelly-forming substances may be obtained from various fruits or vegetables, and I prefer to employ apples-as the source of the product on account of their cheapness, the ease with which they may be handled, and the comparatively large content of peetose substances which form constituent elements of this fruit. The latter may be treated in various ways to yield the peetous or jelly-forming substance, preferably by processing the fruit pulp after the fruit juices have been expressed from the raw fruit to remove the saccharine juices, or natural sugar. This removal of the saccharine juices may also be accomplished by the process of diffusion with water. The fruit pulp thus prepared is then treated with a suitable solvent, such as -hot or boiling water, to which may be added a small proportion of any suitable acid. The addition of the said acid is not at all times necessary, and depends largely upon the degree of ripeness of the fruit or its acidity, and I only deem its use desirable in comparatively small quantities, for the purpose of assisting in liberating the peetous properties of the fruit from the pulp. The treatment of the fruit pulp, it will be understood, may be carried on in any suitable form of vessel, or it may be treated in a digester and the processing done under pressure.”

The elimination (as nearly as possible) of the natural sugar of the fruit or of the pomace from which the peetous substance was produced — a neutral product, as counsel for plaintiff called it — was the patentee’s primary • object, and it is contended that neutralization was essential to keep the pectin, because of the fruit sugar therein, from jellifying or hardening itself.

The first patent has four claims, all of which are herein involved. The third relates to the product, and the fourth to the process. They read as follows:

“3. A concentrated compound of the character described, consisting of a syrupy, viseous liquid, which contains soluble pectins or jelly-forming substances of fruit or vegetable origin, besides other characters derived from the raw material, such as small amounts of residuary sugars, acid, and mineral matters, its essential characteristic being its property of forming a jelly when combined with definite proportions of sugar and water.

“4. The process of producing an unsolidified pectus compound, consisting in treating a fruit or vegetable to remove the natural sugar therefrom, processing the remaining pulp in the presence of a solvent to extract the peetose substances, and reducing the liquor thus obtained by evaporation to a syrupy concentrate.”

These claims are attacked by defendant for indefiniteness and variance from what is shown in the specification, and, accordingly, it is argued that the first and third patents do not distinguish from the prior state of [770]*770the art, and infringement cannot be predicated because defendant makes its product in accordance with old methods. But I do not think the criticism of indefiniteness is vital. The whole description, read with the claims, to my mind, makes fairly clear that the patentee designed to produce a fruit article possessing certain characteristics, to wit, a viscous, concentrated pectin having a certain consistency, from which the greater part of the saccharine juices or natural sugar has been removed, so that it becomes reduced without jellifieation, and a jelly may form upon the addition of a certain amount of sugar and water.

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14 F.2d 768, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1409, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/douglas-pectin-corp-v-armour-co-nywd-1926.