Steam-Gauge & Lantern Co. v. Miller

21 F. 514, 1884 U.S. App. LEXIS 2406
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut
DecidedSeptember 13, 1884
StatusPublished

This text of 21 F. 514 (Steam-Gauge & Lantern Co. v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Steam-Gauge & Lantern Co. v. Miller, 21 F. 514, 1884 U.S. App. LEXIS 2406 (circtdct 1884).

Opinion

Shipman, J.

This is a bill in equity founded upon the alleged infringement of letters patent to A. E. Crihfield, dated April 2, 1867, and of the four following letters patent to John H. Irwin, viz.: Eeissue No. 8,611, dated March 4, 1879,, of original patent No. 73,012; reissue No. 8,598, dated February 25, 1879, of original patent No. 89.770, dated May 4, 1869; No. 104,318, dated June 14, 1870; and No. 151,703, dated June 9, 1874. The plaintiffs do not ask for a decree except upon claims 1, 8, 3, 4, 5, and 8 of reissue 8,598, claim 1 of No. 104,318, and claim 2 of No. 151,703. The first two patents are for improvements in lanterns which burn kerosene, and the third is for an improvement in the same class of lamps or lanterns.

The views of the court upon the propriety of granting the plaintiff’s motion for an injunction pendente lite against -an infringement of these patents, a description of reissue 8,598, and of the invention which it claimed, were given in Steam Gauge & Lantern Co. v. Miller, 8 Fed. Rep. 314, and in Same v. Same, 11 Fed. Rep. 718. The history of the inventions of Mr. Irwin preceding and including No. 89.770, and the views of Judges Drummond and Blodgett upon that [515]*515patent and two prior patents, are contained in Irwin v. Dane, 9 O. G. 642.

The lantern which was made under No. 89,770, and under reissue 8,598, was the first successful kerosene hand lantern which was ever made. It has gone into universal use wherever kerosene is employed for illuminating purposes, and has superseded all previous devices. A characteristic novel principle of this lantern, and the one which, in combination with the other parts of the device, gave it its success, was the supply of fresh or external air to the flame by means of deflectors which compelled the introduction into the supply tubes in an irreversible current of air which, but for such deflectors, would blow over and exhaust the tubes. Previous structures had supply tubes ■which returned vitiated air to the burner, or which furnished fresh air from protected chambers, or which furnished whatever fresh air would enter through an open funnel or bell mouth, but no previous structure furnished fresh air by the aid of injectors which compelled air, which would otherwise strike the lantern in such a direction as to exhaust the tubes, to enter the tubes in a continuous and irreversible current. Mr. Quimby, the plaintiffs’ expert, correctly states this principle In this way:, “The new thing consists in providing the place where the outside air enters with deflecting plates, which will insure the entrance into that place of currents of air which, but for the presence of the deflecting plates, would tend to draw air out of that place.” The defendants’ counsel, not admitting the value of this peculiarity of the “tubular” lantern, have proceeded, upon their part of the case, upon the theory that the device was but a modification of pre-existing devices which had supply tubes, and -was not a primary invention.

While this compulsory introduction of external air into the supply tubes was an important and novel feature of the invention, and the one which gave the lantern its distinctive character, the inventor retained in his structure the tube, II, the common mouth-piece of the supply tubos, and which, as in his older lanterns, furnished, or could furnish, as opportunity offered, a supply of air heated by the burner-flame. This lantern was thus both an internal and an external air-feeder. The defendants’ lanterns are external air-feeders, having elevated tubes outside the globe, disconnected with each other, and for the admission of fresh air only, and having Injectors at the mouths of the tubes, which will be hereafter described.

When the lantern of reissue 8,598 is at rest, and is not blown upon by the wind, the heated air constitutes the only source of supply. When the lantern is oscillated in a violent wind, the plaintiffs insist that the heated air is necessarily expelled through the ejector, and that fresh air becomes the only source of supply for the flame.

The first question to be decided is as to the construction of the reissued patent, assuming that the lantern, when used out of doors in the ordinary way in which swinging hand-lanterns are used, is an [516]*516external air-feeder. The claims of the original and reissued patents are substantially recited in 8 Fed. Rep. 314. The first, second, and eighth 'claims of the reissue are new. The third, fourth, and fifth claims are the same as the first, second, and fourth claims of the original.

The important new claims of the reissue are the first and second. The fourth claim of the reissue, which was the second claim of the original, is the same as the first claim of the reissue, and the fifth claim, which was claim 4 of the original, is the same as the second claim of the reissue, with the exception that each of said old claims has for one of its elements, expressly stated, the tube, H. In the new claims, this tube and the supply tubes, F, F, are called feed conduits, which supply fresh air to the burner. The plaintiffs contend that the tubes, H and F, supply fresh, air, and, as occasion requires, nothing but fresh air, to the ñame, and therefore that the original was not enlarged by specifying that such was their office. On the other hand, if the intention of the patentee, when the original specification was drawn, was to describe and claim a lantern which was supplied by external air, aided in anywise by an ascensive current or blast of heated air, or which was supplied either fyom one or the other source alone, as circumstances required; and if the description and claims specified, as the thing invented and patented, a lantern which had this double source of supply,—then the first two claims of the reissue, which was issued 10 years after the date of the original patent, are to be construed in accordance with the original claims, or are to be held to be an undue enlargement of the original patent. The eighth claim specified conduits which receive the “entire supply of fresh air for the interior of the burner.”

Although the inventor said in the specification of the original patent that the deflection of the external air “would produce a current through the tubes, F, F, in the absence of any other cause,” I think that he meant .to describe and claim a structure having conduits which would supply heated air when the lantern was at rest, and external air when the lantern was exposed to the wind, and would also have, in the last-named condition, the advantage, if any there might be, of a current of heated air. He meant that his patented lantern should be a structure having the cumulative advantages of internal and external air-feeding, and that his patent should be for a lantern which had heated air as an assistance in introducing a flow of fresh air through the tubes. This is shown in the following paragraph in his specification: ■ ■

“It will also appear, from the above description, that there are three separate causes to produce a proper current through the tubes, F, F, to the base of the flame, viz., the ascensive force of the air heated by the burner flame, and the cooling of said heated air within the tubes; the pressure of a moving current deflected towards the mouth of the tube, H; and the centrifugal effect of swinging or oscillating the lantern. And it will be observed that either the second or third causes will always be cumulative with the first, to [517]

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Related

McCormick v. Talcott
61 U.S. 402 (Supreme Court, 1858)
Irwin v. Dane
13 F. Cas. 117 (U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illnois, 1876)

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Bluebook (online)
21 F. 514, 1884 U.S. App. LEXIS 2406, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/steam-gauge-lantern-co-v-miller-circtdct-1884.