Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Fox Typewriter Co.

181 F. 530, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5816
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Michigan
DecidedNovember 1, 1909
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 181 F. 530 (Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Fox Typewriter Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Fox Typewriter Co., 181 F. 530, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5816 (circtwdmi 1909).

Opinion

KNAPPEN, District Judge.

This suit is brought on account of the alleged infringement of two United States patents granted to Josiah B. Gathright on tabulating devices for typewriting machines. The numbers and dates of the patents are, respectively, 436,916, September 23, 1890, and 452,268, May 12, 1891. These patents will hereafter be referred to, respectively, as the first and second Gathright patents. In the early history of the typewriting art, in order to bring words and figures into accurate vertical columns, as required in invoices, statements of account, and other work of that kind, it was necessary to advance the carriage to the columnating point one space at a time by repeatedly striking the usual spacing key or by unlatching the carriage and sliding it to the desired point by hand.

The specifications of the first Gathright patent, after reciting this early history of the typewriting art and stating that such processes were tedious and perplexing to the operator, and that the object of the invention “is to obviate these objections by providing means for automatically locating with the typewriter one or more columns of words or figures and of mechanically skipping any intervening space desired to be left blank,” describe the tabulating mechanism as embracing a “supplemental spacing key,” so called, and the use of a stop entirely distinct from the spacing mechanism, adapted to engage with the carriage. By the words “supplemental spacing key” the inventor says he means a key exclusively devoted to the duty of, first, disengaging the carriage rack from the detent and holding it disengaged until the carriage, traveling its usual path, has passed over the space which it is desirable to skip “to a stop whose location is adjustable and was predetermined to fit said skipped space; and, second, to remove the said stop by the act of releasing the said spacing key, thus permitting the carriage to resume service at the usual letter spaces.” Of this supplemental skipping key the inventor further says that :

“It has only one service to perform. When it is pressed down in operation, it releases the carriage detent and places an adjusted stop in the path of the carriage to arrest it at the desired point. On permitting the supplemental spacing key to rise, it withdraws the stop from the path of the carriage, leaving it free to resume work, as usual.”

This supplemental. spacing key the inventor contrasts with keys which allow the carriage to advance but one letter space at a time, also with the common hand lever, whereby the carriage may be raised from its usual path and carried over any number of letter spaces; also, with any key adapted by light pressure to advance the carriage a single letter space and by a heavier pressure to entirely release the carriage, so that it may travel over a number of letter spaces to a stop. The tabulating attachment was entirely independent of the spacing and feeding mechanism, and was designed by the inventor to be attached to or removed from a machine without interfering with its use as a writing machine; the specifications saying:

“It would require only ordinary mechanical skill to adapt my stop rod and lugs to any kind of a self-feeding typewriting machine by following ont the [532]*532principle of construction herein described. Therefore, I deem it unnecessary to illustrate its application to the great variety of typewriting machines which have been invented.”

The claims of the first Gathright patent which are involved here are the fourth and fifth, which are as follows:

“4. The combination of a stop rod freely hung to the machine, a stop lug thereon, and a supplemental spacing key hung in the machine and adapted to move the said stop lug into the path of a portion of the feed carriage, and connection between the stop rod and rack bar, substantially as shown and described.
“5. In a typewriter, the combination, of the usual letter keys and one or more spacing keys having mechanism in common for permitting the carriage to move a definite space at each stroke, and a supplemental spacing or skipping key fitted to permit the carriage to move any desired number of said spaces, according to adjustment, said key provided with independent mechanism for releasing the carriage from the detent, and mechanism for simultaneously interposing an adjustable stop, substantially as shown and described.”

’ In the case of Wagner Typewriter Co. v. Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict, 151 Fed. 585, 81 C. C. A. 129 (hereafter called “the original case”), which was decided January 8, 1907, the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit considered and construed both Gathright patents. It was there held that long previous to Gathright’s first invention Schulte, McCormack, Yost, and others had conceived the broad idea of an automatic tabulating attachment, and had described operative mechanism for carrying it out, but that all the inventors prior to Gathright used the feed dog to contact with and stop the carriage, that the principal features of Gathright’s first invention are, first, a supplemental spacing' key exclusively devoted to the tabulating attachment and performing no function except in connection therewith; and, second, a lift slide and stop rod freely hung, adjustable longitudinally of the machine, and normally supported close beneath some cross-portion like the lateral arm of the feed rack. In the case of American Writing Mach. Co. v. Wagner Typewriter Co., decided at the same time with the "original case” (151 Fed. 576, 81 C. C. A. 120), the early history of the tabulating art is given.

In Gathright’s invention pressure on the supplemental spacing key disengages the rack from the feed dog by raising the rack and holding it disengaged until the carriage passes over the desired space, when it is stopped by the lateral arm of the feed bar coming into contact with lugs adjustably, but firmly fixed to the stop rod, the raising of the rack from the feed dog being directly effected by the raising of the stop rod, which itself lifts the feed rack by raising the lateral arm thereof designed to contact with the lugs on the stop rod. When pressure on the key is released, the stop rod returns to its normal position, the lugs are removed from the path of the carriage, the feed rack lowered into engagement with the feed dog, and the machine is free to resume its step by step action. It was held by the Court of Appeals in the original case that Gathright’s contribution to the art consists in “providing an independent mechanism, operated by a separate spacing key, by which adjustable stop lugs can be brought into contact with a portion of the feed carriage, thus dispensing with the use of the small [533]*533and comparatively delicate feed dog or detent to bear the greatly increased strain when the carriage is released from the step by step movement.” The first Gathright patent was held to be valid, and, although not a pioneer invention, was held to cover a primary and valuable improvement on the tabulators of the prior art and to be the first practically and commercially successful tabulating device; and its claims thus entitled to a construction sufficiently liberal, and a range of equivalents sufficiently broad, to protect the actual invention. The Gorin tabulator which was there involved was held to infringe the first Gathright patent.

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Related

Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Fox Typewriter Co.
220 F. 880 (Sixth Circuit, 1915)
Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Fox Typewriter Co.
181 F. 541 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern New York, 1910)

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Bluebook (online)
181 F. 530, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 5816, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/underwood-typewriter-co-v-fox-typewriter-co-circtwdmi-1909.