Gilbert & Barker Manuf'g Co. v. Walworth Manuf'g Co.

10 F. Cas. 352, 2 Ban. & A. 271
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts
DecidedApril 4, 1870
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 10 F. Cas. 352 (Gilbert & Barker Manuf'g Co. v. Walworth Manuf'g Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gilbert & Barker Manuf'g Co. v. Walworth Manuf'g Co., 10 F. Cas. 352, 2 Ban. & A. 271 (circtdma 1870).

Opinion

SHEPLEY, Circuit Judge.

The complainants are the owners of letters patent of the United States, dated August 3, 1869, No. 93,-208, for an improved apparatus for carburet-ting air. The invention is described in the specifications as relating to the apparatus used for carburetting air in the manufacture of illuminating-gas for dwelling-houses and factories, and as consisting in the arrangement of the carburetter with the meter-wheel or pump for driving the air through said carburetter to the burners, and the coil and heating-pipes for evaporating the oil within the carburetter, whereby the whole apparatus is rendered perfectly safe with regard to life and property in the building lighted, the carburetter being situated in a vault or house away from the building to be lighted, while the heating-apparatus and the pump or meter-wheel are within the building to be lighted, and where they can be easily and quickly reached, and under perfect control of the occupant of the house. There was nothing novel in the meter-wheel or the carburetter, or the combination of a meter-wheel with a carburetter, or their connection with a gas-pipe, air, or heating-pipes, except so far as their location and arrangement was claimed to be new, by placing the carburetter in a vault or house by itself, separate from the building to be lighted, and arranging the meter-wheel and the heating-coil in the building to be lighted, where they could be easily reached, and under control of the occupant of the house, without exposure to explosion consequent upon frequent access to the room in which the carburetter is placed, and connected by pipes passing through a wall or the ground, so as to cut off any communication of gas or flame between the room in which the carburetter is placed and the building to be lighted.

It is denied on the part of the defendants that there is any patentability in such a change of location of parts, all of which are confessedly old. Mere change of location is not patentable; but where change of location brings into existence a new combination of devices operating by reason of such new combination to produce a new and useful result, such new combination is patentable. Woodruff, J., in Marsh v. Dodge & Stevenson Manuf’g Co. [Case No. 9,115],

I am not prepared to say that the new arrangement and location constituting a new form or mode of combination, as described in the patent, taking into consideration the new and useful result claimed for it, was not patentable, if it was novel at the time claimed as the date of plaintiffs’ invention. The combination and arrangement of the respondents embrace all that is claimed in the first claim of the patent. No issue of infringement need, therefore, be considered. The only material question left for consideration is whether what is claimed in the first claim of the patent was new in the sense of the patent law. The determination of this question requires a careful and critical analysis of the supposed invention and of the first claim of the patent, and a careful comparison of the claimed invention with the prior existing combinations and arrangements claimed as anticipating it.

The invention described and claimed is “The arrangement of the carburetter” (that is, any carburetter, for no new form of carburetter is claimed or was invented) “with a meter-wheel, said wheel being driven by a descending weight, or other equivalent mechanical power, applied to force the air through the carburetter to the burners” (this allows the use of an equivalent for the weight to drive the meter-wheel, and embraces the use of “other equivalent mechanical power applied to force the air through the carburetter to the burners,” as, for instance, an hydraulic blower, an air-pump, a pump with a gas-holder, known generally as a gasometer, a bag weighted, or other well-known equivalents, for this purpose,. of a meter-wheel pump), “said carburetter being placed within a vault” (i. e., an arched or vaulted appartment, especially a subterranean room) “or house” “by itself, separate from the building to be lighted, the whole arranged and connected with pipes, substantially” as therein (in the patent) “described and set forth.”

[353]*353[Drawings of patent No. 93.2GS, publishel from the records of the United States patent' office.]

This arrangement and connection embraces —First, pipe A, the air-pipe, which, running through the wall of the building, and, also, when required, the ground between the walls of the building to be lighted and the carburetter-room, connects the meter-wheel pump, or its equivalent, inside the building with the carburetter , in its “vault or house,” furnishing a conduit for the air from the pump to the carburetter; second, the heating-coil P and pipes R R connecting a heating-coil in the building with a carburetter in the vault or house; third, the pipe N, the gas-pipe leading through the wall or ground, or both, as the ease may be, from the carburetter in its vault or house into the building to be lighted, furnishing a conduit from the gas in the carburetter to the distributing-pipes and the burners. The first claim in the patent is for all this combination and arrangement (exclusive of the heating-coil P and heating-pipes R R). The second claim is for the heating-coil and its connections with the heating-pipes, and the carburetter with reference to their respective locations. As the defendants use no heating-coil or pipes, no question arises in this case on the second claim, and its only importance is in aiding in the construction of the first claim.

Having now definitely stated the invention described and claimed in the patent, we pass to the consideration of the function and purpose of the patented combination and arrangement. This is clearly set forth by the pat-entees. They describe their invention as consisting in an arrangement “whereby the whole apparatus is rendered safe with regard to life and property in the building lighted, the carburetter being situated in a vault or house away from the building to be lighted, and where they can be easily and quietly reached, and under perfect control of the occupant of the house.”

Without instituting a comparison between the patented invention and all the other prior existing forms of apparatus for car-buretting air for illuminating purposes, which have been proved to have existed, I have selected the Meriden machine for the reasons that it is proved to have been constructed and operated successfully in the fall of 180-1, while the invention of Gilbert & Barker is not even claimed to have been before June, 1807, and also because this apparatus appears to me to have embodied in 1804, in successful and practical and public use, every element of the first claim of the complainants’ patent of August, 1869.

The Meriden apparatus was used for car-buretting air for illuminating a factory. It consisted of an air-pump and air-receiver, a well-known equivalent for the meter-pump wheel, a carburetter, the equivalent of complainants’ carburetter, placed in a brick vault built on the surface of the ground, ninety-three feet from the main building to be lighted. This was actually both a vaultand a house, and, therefore, identical with complainants’ vault or house. There was an air-pipe, which connected the pump inside of the building to be lighted with the carburetter in the vault, passing underground and furnishing a conduit from the air in the pump to the carburetter, being thus the equivalent of complainants’ pipe A. There was a gas-pipe leading from the carburetter in the vault through and underground, and furnishing a conduit for the carburetted air or gas from the carburetter to the building to be lighted.

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Bluebook (online)
10 F. Cas. 352, 2 Ban. & A. 271, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gilbert-barker-manufg-co-v-walworth-manufg-co-circtdma-1870.