Home/Third Circuit/Miller v. Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co.

Miller v. Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co.

139 F. 134, 71 C.C.A. 398, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 3864
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJune 27, 1905
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 139 F. 134 (Miller v. Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Miller v. Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co., 139 F. 134, 71 C.C.A. 398, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 3864 (3d Cir. 1905).

Opinion

GRAY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from the decree of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in a suit in equity,- in which the Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Company, the appellee, was complainant, and the appellants were the defendants. The bill prayed the restraint of an alleged infringement of letters patent No. 614,279, granted to Edwin J. Walker, November 15, 1898, for an improvement in pivoted or tilting bins. The appellee claims ownership to the patent by assignment, and such ownership is not disputed. The answer of the defendants-appellants denies infringement of said patent, and alleges that the patent is void, in view of the prior state of the art. The decfee affirmed the validity of the patent and ordered an injunction and an accounting against the appellants. The validity of the patent here in suit had been passed upon and sustained in the court below, by the same judge (Archbald, District Judge, specially assigned) in a previous case between the same complain[135]*135ant and other alleged infringers. No useful end would be served by attempting to supplement the thorough, and to us satisfactory, discussion of the questions here involved, presented by the opinions in both cases. We therefore adopt the opinion of the court below in the case before us (132 Ned. 823) which is as follows:

The patent in suit was considered and sustained in this court in Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co. v. Brown and Krause (C. C.), 110 Fed. 649; and while the defendants, not being parties, are not bound thereby, yet, as was said in Penfield v. Potts, 126 Fed. 475, 61 C. C. A. 371, “a decent respect for the stability of judicial decision and a proper regard for the security of property in the same patent” require that this shall not be disturbed, unless there was very palpable error.
So far as the same references are relied upon to negative novelty, nothing particularly new is suggested, and as to this the same conclusion must therefore be reached. The Schultz (1861), the Porter (1867), and the Powell (1885) are additionally cited, but neither of them differs materially from the Stewart, the Carr, or the Burgett, previously considered; each being simply different forms of tilting, pivoted, more or less counterbalanced bins. That of the complainants belongs to the same general class; but, as pointed out before, it is distinguished from the rest by its swell front, and — except as to the Carr — by the location of the axis of oscillation at the front edge of the, supporting casing, whereby a more perfect counterbalancing is secured. The attempt that is made to prove that the invention could be realized by changing over some of the others, such as the Stewart, only serves the more to emphasize the distinction. Not only do the proposed changes fall far short of their purpose, but to the extent that they go in that direction they work a practical transformation. The Stewart, made over, is neither itself, nor the bin of Walker, nor, for that matter, anything that any one would be likely to construct or use, which is fair proof, not only of the underlying difference between the two, but of the invention involved in devising it. The required changes are not mere matters of degree, as argued, but are substantial, and go to the creation of a new character of bin. I see no occasion* therefore, for departing from my previous opinion, by which the patent was upheld, and the only question now is whether it has been infringed.
The first claim, which is the one relied upon, is as follows:
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Related

Krauth v. Autographic Register Co.
285 F. 199 (D. New Jersey, 1921)
Cincinnati Butchers' Supply Co. v. Walker Bin Co.
230 F. 453 (Sixth Circuit, 1916)
Bernard Gloekler Co. v. Walker Bin Co.
225 F. 46 (Third Circuit, 1915)
Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co. v. Bernard Gloekler Co.
188 F. 435 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Pennsylvania, 1909)
Miller v. Walker Patent Pivoted Bin Co.
145 F. 832 (Third Circuit, 1906)

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Bluebook (online)
139 F. 134, 71 C.C.A. 398, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 3864, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/miller-v-walker-patent-pivoted-bin-co-ca3-1905.