Johnson Automatic Scale Co. v. Ginn

10 F.2d 793, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 952
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedJanuary 29, 1926
DocketNo. 1804
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 10 F.2d 793 (Johnson Automatic Scale Co. v. Ginn) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Johnson Automatic Scale Co. v. Ginn, 10 F.2d 793, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 952 (D. Mass. 1926).

Opinion

MORTON, District Judge.

This is a suit for infringement of letters patent to Dear-born, No. 1,158,186, dated October 26, 1915 (application May 29, 1914), and to Johnson, No. 1,270,416, dated June 25, 1918 (application January 30, 1915).

At the time when the first of the patents in suit (the Dearborn patent) was applied for there were successful machines for wrapping in wax paper loaves of bread, and small rectangular objects like caramels, packages of chewing gum, etc.; but there was no machine, so far as now appears, for wrapping cartons of ordinary commercial size. While to a large extent the problem of wrapping such cartons was similar to that of the other articles referred to, it was by no means identical. The problems were alike, in that all the machines had to handle each article separately, to feed and wrap around 'it a sheet of paper, to fold the ends of the paper, and finally to discharge the wrapped article, all of which had been done mechanically before Dearborn. Beyond this there were important differences. In wrapping bread, appearance is not of much importance; the essential thing being that the wrapping shall be complete and secure. In wrapping cartons, on the other hand, neatness of appearance is essential. As between small rectangular objects like caramels and the much larger cartons (the standard size of which is 3x6x9 inches), the difference in size and weight introduces elements of difficulty in designing the machine. It is to be remembered that the present method of selling food products in cartons had by no means reached its present vogue at the time in question (1913), although it was developing. In many country stores there was still the open cracker barrel, not far from the cheese. Successful automatic machinery for making, filling, and closing cartons was still recent. Wax wrapping was new, and the need of a wax-wrapping machine for completing cartons was not of long standing. Sevigné testifies — I think correctly- — that his machine would wrap ear-tons; but for reasons herein suggested I do not think it would do it as well as the Dear-born machine.

Dearborn turned to the problem at the right time. He found already developed the basic ideas, as above noticed, on which the machine must rest, worked out in a variety of ways. He did not, however, find in the prior art any way of end-folding wax wrappers which would be satisfactory as applied to cartons. This, I think, was his major problem. The end fold around a loaf of bread is clumsy and ill-looking; the end fold on a caramel would be clumsy, if applied to a large object, and wasteful of paper. There was in the prior art a rotating end tucker and folder, invented by McGirr, which was a clever bit of inventive thought. McGirr patent, March 31, 1914, No. 1,091,684. McGirr seems not to have made practical use of his invention; possibly he did not put it into a [795]*795definitely workable design. But the inventive idea was clearly there, to be availed of by more persistent or skillful mechanics. The' patent to Cowles and Hanford, dated March 14,1911, also showed rotary tuckers and folders. Dearborn took the McGirr tucker and folder, redesigned it, modified the application of it, duplicated it for opposite ends of the carton, and put it into his carton-wrapping machine. The Dearborn machine, as described in his patent, involves many other points of invention, but none of them now appear to be of much importance, while his end-closing mechanism in its essential principle is found in all successful machines.

It is urged by the defendant that Dear-born’s adaptation of the McGirr device was a mere mechanical alteration or use of an existing mechanism. A discussion of the point, if undertaken, would necessarily be extremely long and involved, and hardly understandable without elaborate drawings. I content myself with saying that the contention seems to me unsound. What Dearborn did was much more than a mechanical rearrangement of the McGirr patent, and involved real invention. Dearborn built a machine according to his patent; and it was in use in the Maple Make factory from 1913 to 1917, where it ran at the rate of 30 cartons a minute. His patent is therefore entitled to a pretty broad construction of its claims which involve this element.

The claims of the Dearborn patent which are specially directed to the end-folder mechanism are 28 and 29. In each it is explicitly stated that the end folders “oscillate.” Dear-born’s end folders were oscillated by a cam; in the defendants’ machine, they revolve. The defendants contend that for this reason their machine does not infringe these claims. In each machine the end folders perform the same function in substantially the same way. The question is whether the patentee, having explicitly limited his claim to folders which “oscillate,” should be allowed to enlarge them by claiming as equivalent a similar folder which revolves. It has been held in this circuit that the plain language of claims cannot be disregarded, however meritorious the invention. American Rolled Gold Leaf Co. v. W. H. Coe Mfg. Co., 212 F. 720, 129 C. C. A. 330. That ease, however, was stronger for the defendant on the facts than the present one. There the machine of the patent itself made a lapping contact between the strips of gold, while in the machine of the defendant such contact was made by a manual movement of the operator. This, it was held, was not “automatic,” within the meaning of the claim. No question of equivalents was involved. See, too, Keystone Bridge Co. v. Phœnix Iron Co., 95 U. S. 274, 24 L. Ed. 344; White v. Dunbar, 119 U. S. 47, 7 S. Ct. 72, 30 L. Ed. 303. Considering the rather basic character of the Dearborn invention as to the end folders, it seems to me entitled to such a range of equivalents as includes an end folder of the same design and operating on the same principle, but returning to position by a forward rotating movement, instead of a backward oscillatory one. I do not find anything in the negotiations with the Patent Office which precludes the patentee from taking this position. I therefore am of opinion that these two claims are valid and infringed.

In any wrapping machine it is necessary that a sheet of paper be introduced, properly timed and positioned with respect to the package to be wrapped. It is apparent that, if paper be fed when there is no package, trouble will ensue. This has been recognized from the beginning of the wrapping-machine art. No machine could be successful as an automatic machine without some arrangement to prevent feeding paper unless a package was present. Potbury so arranged his caramel-wrapping machine in 1907, and Sevigné his bread-wrapping machine in 1912. In both of these machines the paper feed was intermittent, the feed rolls stopping after each sheet, and being set .in motion again by the next article. Dearborn so timed his feed rolls and his carton-handling mechanism that he ran his rolls continuously as long as the stream of cartons was unbroken. This feature of the Dearborn machine is overemphasized, as I think, by the plaintiff’s expert, whose testimony was at times lacking in candor and in- correctness. However their operation be described, the fact is that all successful wrapping machines feed paper when there is an article to be wrapped, and do not do so when there is no article to be wrapped. In all of them the paper feed is set in motion by the articles, and is as continuous— broadly speaking — as the stream of them, and no more so.

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10 F.2d 793, 1926 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 952, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/johnson-automatic-scale-co-v-ginn-mad-1926.