Rice v. Heald

20 F. Cas. 658, 13 P.L.R. 33, 1877 U.S. App. LEXIS 1977
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of California
DecidedJanuary 13, 1877
StatusPublished

This text of 20 F. Cas. 658 (Rice v. Heald) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rice v. Heald, 20 F. Cas. 658, 13 P.L.R. 33, 1877 U.S. App. LEXIS 1977 (circtdca 1877).

Opinion

SAWYER, Circuit Judge

(orally charging jury). Gentlemen of the jury, it now remains for the court to instruct you as to the law applicable to this case, and then it will be your duty to determine the facts. This is an action, as you have already learned, to recover damages for the infringement of .■a patent issued to Harvey AY. Rice for an improvement in a class of steam boilers, more particularly those that are used for threshing •engines in the field. You will bear in mind that there has been a good deal said about .another patent to one Morey, in the course of this trial and in the argument. It appears -that Rice also owns the Morey patent, but the action is not brought upon the Morey patent. It is brought simply upon the Rice patent. So that you have nothing to do with any infringement of the Morey patent. The question for you to determine is, whether there is any infringement of the Rice patent, .and on the question of infringement your attention will be confined to the Rice patent. 'The plaintiff cannot recover in this action for any infringemenr of the Morey patent, although Rice may own the Morey patent. The rights of the parties here must depend upon the Rice patent alone.

The statute provides that any person who has invented or discovered any new or useful machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement ■thereof, not known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any other country, shall be entitled to a patent. That embraces a patent for composition of matter or an improvement in a machine. It is claimed in this instance that there is an improvement in a machine. You will observe that, in order that a party may be entitled to a patent, the thing or the machine that he makes must be new. He must have invented it. He must not only have invented it, but he must have been the first inventor. Mr. Rice claims that he has invented this improvement upon the machine. He also claims that he is the first inventor. If it has been invented and in use in this country before, or has been invented in a foreign country, and a patent issued for it in a foreign •country, and there has been a description of the machine in a foreign country in any publication. that is sufficient to defeat the patent.

The first question, you perceive, is, is this new? And I will say in connection with this matter, gentlemen, that there may be a patent for a new machine entirely composed of ■original elements, — original parts, — or there may be a patent of a combination of several distinct parts, neither one of which parts is new. A party may take two, three, four, five, or any other number of old things that .are well known and are in use, and put them together, and make some new combination, and if that new combination produces a new and useful result, he will be entitled to a patent for the combination; and any one who uses that combination would be an infringer upon his rights. The patent in this ease, then, is for a combination, because all of the elements are old, and it is the combination only that is new. The combination must be such as to produce a new and a useful result; that is to say, a result which none of them would produce in their several parts taken by themselves. Is this patent new, and is the plaintiff the original inventor of it?

Upon the question as to whether it is new, and whether he is the original inventor", the patent itself, having been issued to him up-en an examination, is prima facie evidence, and is sufficient to make out a case upon those points, provided there is no other testimony in the ease. It makes a case which devolves the duty upon the other party to show that it has been anticipated by some other machine or some other invention. There is testimony here, in addition to the patent, tending to show that Rice was the original inventor, and also that it is new. But there is testimony, upon the other hand, which is claimed upon the part of the defense to overthrow this presumption. Defendant claims to have established by testimony that this has been anticipated by other machines, and the question for you to determine is whether the testimony is suffi-eient. in your minds, to overthrow the prima facie case made by the patent, and to show to your satisfaction that the invention has been anticipated. The first patent which is introduced as an anticipation, and one upon which the defendant seems most strenuously to rely, is the Morey patent. In connection with that is the Garratt patent, a patent which is shown to you in a publication made in England; but the Morey patent is the one upon which the most strenuous efforts have been made, and upon which the greatest stress has been laid -in this trial. Now. the question to determine is, is the Rice patent new or not? or is it but an adaptation and a carrying out of Morey’s idea, without the addition of any new conception?

I am asked, gentlemen, in this connection, to instruct you, in the langinage of a passage taken from the decision of the supreme court. that “a mere carrying forward, or new or more extended application, by one patentee of the original thought of another, — a change only in form, proportions, or degree, doing substantially the same thing in the same way by substantially the same means, — is not such an invention as would sustain a patent, even though the result may be better”; and if it turns out that this is all that Rice’s patent did with Morey's invention, then the defendant is entitled to a verdict. That, gentlemen. is true. I give you that instruction in the languge of the supreme court. But the same court, in the same case, in inline-[660]*660díate connection with this language, uses also the following language: “But a new idea may be ingrafted upon an old invention, and be distinct from the conception which preceded it, and be an improvement. In such case it is patentable.” Now, is this case of the Rice patent a carrying forward merely of the old idea, or is there an ingrafting of a new and distinct idea upon Morey’s conception?

As to what these two patents cover is a matter of construction for the court. Morey’s patent makes no reference to a steam boiler, otherwise than his invention it to be attached to a steam boiler, and he refers to it as for use with a threshing machine. His combination is simply the attachment connected with a furnace, as described in his patent, and there is nothing in his own testimony that indicates that his conception extended beyond that idea. His idea, as gathered from his description and the claim in the patent, is that he made this box or feeding attachment, and attached it to the door, — to the furnace door of an engine, and his conception was an ar'rangement for feeding in the straw and for shutting off the draught so as to regulate, control, and modify the combustion in the furnace where the heat is generated. It only extended to that idea. Nothing else can be gathered from the language in his description, in his specifications, or claim. A boiler, of course, must be used, and he only refers to that as an instrument for generating steam from the effects of the heat. An engine also must be used in connection with it. He makes no other reference to the engine than as being propelled by the motive power that is generated. A threshing machine, also, must be used, but none of those enter into his conception; that is to say, neither the boiler, the engine, nor the threshing machine form any part of his conception as to what regulated, controlled, or modified the combustion of the fuel for the generation of heat.

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Related

Heald v. Rice
104 U.S. 737 (Supreme Court, 1882)

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Bluebook (online)
20 F. Cas. 658, 13 P.L.R. 33, 1877 U.S. App. LEXIS 1977, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rice-v-heald-circtdca-1877.