Simonds Holling-Mach. Co. v. Hathorn Mfg. Co.

90 F. 201, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2485
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Maine
DecidedJuly 30, 1898
DocketNo. 487
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 90 F. 201 (Simonds Holling-Mach. Co. v. Hathorn Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Simonds Holling-Mach. Co. v. Hathorn Mfg. Co., 90 F. 201, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2485 (circtdme 1898).

Opinion

PUTNAM, Circuit Judge.

This bill is brought on the two claims of a certain patent, applied for on June 16, 1884, and issued on June [202]*2029, 1885, to George F. Simonds, and on a patent, wliicli contains only one claim, applied for by the same George F. Simonds on March 24, 1885, and issued to him on January 14, 1890. It may be of importance to note here that, although the earlier patent issued several yéars before the later one, yet the application for the later one was filed while the earlier one was pending in the patent office.

The introductory part of the earlier patent claims that Simonds had invented “certain improvements in faces for car-axle dies designed to be used in pairs,” and the specification describes the alleged invention as follows:

“My invention relates to die faces Which are moved in opposite directions over the metal to be shaped, the blank rotating on its axis between them. My invention consists in dies designed to be used in pairs, and provided with forming surfaces raised upon the plane face of the die, and with reducing and spreading surfaces running diagonal to the line of movement of the die, and standing oblique to the plane of the die.”

The claims in that patent are as follows:

“(1) Dies adapted to form metal articles circular in cross-sectional area, with the working parts raised upon a plane surface, and provided with forming surfaces running in line with the movement of the die, to give the shape required, and diverging reducing- and spreading surfaces to force the metal laterally, substantially as described.
“(2) Dies adapted to form metal articles circular in cross-sectional area, having forming surfaces to give the shape required, and reducing and spreading surfaces to force the metal laterally, provided with corrugations or irregularities, to engage the mass of metal and insure its rotation, substantially as set forth.”

In the introductory paragraph of the later patent, Simonds claims to have invented “certain improvements in methods for making wrought-metal forgings that are circular in cross-sectional area”; and in the specification he states: “My invention consists in a novel method of making wrought-metal forgings which are circular in cross-sectional area.”

The claim is as follows:

“The method herein described of making rolled-metal forgings by acting upon all parts of a metal bar in spiral lines, so as at each part in succession' and upon such lines to cause the bar to rotate and to strain and spread the metal axially and compress it to the required shape and size.”

The specification states that the various mechanical devices and die faces illustrated and described had been made the subject-matter of various applications for patents, of which five are referred-to by the serial numbers of the applications. With the rest is included serial number 135,014, which resulted in the earlier patent in issue here. What various devices and die faces were made the subject-matter of the four other applications has not been called to our attention, and we therefore presume it is of no consequence in this case.

The later patent also states that there was a pending application for the articles produced by the improved method claimed in it; but the history of that application has not been brought to our attention, and we assume that it, also, is of no present importance. We state these -facts, therefore, only in order that it may be seen that, pending the application for the earlier patent in suit, Simonds had on file in [203]*203the patent office applications for patents for both, the product and the method or art to which the patented dies were supposed to relate.

A controversy arises whether or not the later patent for the method or art was valid, in view of the issue of the earlier patent for the dies made use of in the art; but this will be considered in its proper order. Aside from this, the only important question in the case which, in our opinion, requires our attention, grows out of a patent issued in England to William Bundy, on May 1, 1806, in which the patentee briefly describes his monopoly as covering an “invention of machines or instruments for the purpose of making leaden bullets and other shot.” It is plain that the machines which Bundy exhibited in his specification concerned only spherical objects, while both the dies and the meihod or art claimed by the complainant in this case have a much broader range. Nevertheless, the underlying principle of all that Simonds patented is involved in connection with the' production of spheres, and he makes use of the mechanical laws of the Bundy dies; but he also makes use of the laws of physics by virtue of which his dies, while forming (he sphere, produce, in addition, a “forged surface,” in the technical sense of the term. None of these laws are explained in Simonds’ specification, which is of no legal consequence, because an inventor is not deprived of the fruits of his genius by the fact, if it exists, that he is neither a mathematician nor a physicist. Nor are the laws properly expounded in any portion of the proofs which have been called to our attention. We will not attempt to explain them ourselves, nor to describe categorically or technically the elements of the dies used by either Bundy or Simonds for forming spherical objects. We will endeavor, however, to make up from Simonds’ specifications a sufficiently practical explanation of them, leaving the mathematical and physical principles which they involve to be worked out by those who are curious to do so.

The dies are in pairs, reciprocating face to face, commencing their movement at the vanishing points to which we will refer. Into the face of each die is cut a depression, which begins at a vanishing point at one extremity, and at the other extremity exhibits a cross section which is half of a cylinder, or, as expressed in Simonds’ specification in his later patent, “about” half. From the vanishing point at one extremity to the other extremity, the die face is said by Simonds, in the same specification, to gradually deepen and spread until it reaches the other extremity, where, as said, the cross section is half of a cylinder, or 1 hereabouts. In Bundy’s specification he says, in substance, that, when the two dies have been moved from right to left, so that their work is complete, they form, “when close together at the two extremes,” “a complete cylindrical hole, the diameter of the ball intended to be made.” As already said, Bundy had in contemplation only the shaping of spheres; but Simonds, in his earlier patent, as expressed in his claims, had in contemplation the shaping of various “metal articles circular in cross-sectional area”; and he exhibited, in his drawings attached to his specification, dies adapted to the rolling of car axles, and no other dies. It is evident that he had these particular dies primarily in contemplation, and this even. [204]*204to the extent of the fact that he made no allusion whatever to spherical objects until he drew his specification for his later patent.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
90 F. 201, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2485, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/simonds-holling-mach-co-v-hathorn-mfg-co-circtdme-1898.