Home/Third Circuit/Union Special Mach. Co. v. Quaker City Flour Mills Co.

Union Special Mach. Co. v. Quaker City Flour Mills Co.

253 F. 557, 165 C.C.A. 227, 1917 U.S. App. LEXIS 1307
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedAugust 2, 1917
DocketNos. 2201, 2202
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 253 F. 557 (Union Special Mach. Co. v. Quaker City Flour Mills 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
Union Special Mach. Co. v. Quaker City Flour Mills Co., 253 F. 557, 165 C.C.A. 227, 1917 U.S. App. LEXIS 1307 (3d Cir. 1917).

Opinion

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.

In the court below the Union Special Machine Company filed a bill in equity against the Quaker City Flour Mills Company, charging infringement of two patents granted to it as assignee. One of said patents, No. 875,314, to John Bigelow, on December 31, 1907, was for a filled-bag sewing machine; the other, No. 875,339, to Charles H. Foster, also dated December 31, 1907, was for apparatus for delivering filled bags to sewing machines. That court adjudged each patent invalid as to the claims in suit, holding, in an opinion reported at 236 Fed. 246, that:

‘Tn view of the prior art, the subject-matter claimed therein involved only the exercise of mechanical skill, and did not require invention.”

The case is an important one. It concerns machines in general use, of high mechanical effectiveness, and of much economic and commercial value in industries where the mouths of filled bags of different sizes are sewed. The plaintiff is a large manufacturer of special sewing machines for factory, as distinguished from domestic, use, and, [558]*558while the defendant is engaged in milling flour, its bag-sewing machine is manufactured by the Washburn-Crosby Company, which is defending this test case. No questions of title or accounting for past profits are here involved, and the purpose of the parties is to make this a test case between the two manufacturers. It will therefore be seen the issues involved are simply validity and infringement.

[1]" Turning first to the question of validity, we note that it is now clear‘that the successful solution of the problem of constructing a filled-bag sewing machine involves the successful co-ordination of several dependent mechanical elements. In the first place, for successful commercial practice, it is necessary that the passage of the bags on the endless conveyor be rapid; otherwise, the machine could not be used. In the next place, for mechanical reasons, it is necessary that the travel of the bags be continuous and nonintermittent, as it is obvious that a conveyor should not be subjected to the sudden and numerous jerks incident to an intermittent, interrupted forward movement of a number of heavy filled bags. In the next place, the sewing b.y machine of a fabric requires that there must be an intermittent dwell or interrupted movement of the fabric during the instant the needle is in it. It follows, therefore, that to make a bag-sewing machine mechanically operative, that portion of the bag which is immediately adjacent to the stitch-forming mechanism, and which is being sewed, must have an intermittent forward movement to permit needle disengagement from the fabric, while at the same time there must be a continuous, nonintermittent advance of the main body or bulk of the bag; in other words, there must be a distinct, individual, intermittent fabric feed, and a distinct, individual, continuous bag, feed, different in themselves, but so coupled and co-ordinated by combining mechanism that the continuous travel of the body of the bag and the intermittent travel of the mouth of the bag shall be actuated from a single driving shaft, so as not to conflict with each other.

That filled bags could be conveyed rapidly was, of course, well known. That filled bags could be successfully machine sewed was equally well known. That bag conveyance was and must be continuous and nonintermittent, and that sewing was and must be intermittent, were recognized facts. It was, however,, to the very difficult problem of the harmonizing of these two latter seemingly, antagonistic, indispensable factors, that the patent of Bigelow was, in the claims here concerned, addressed. In addition to the above antagonistic elements of fabric feed and bag feed, three other complicating -factors were also involved. In the first place, the bag was filled and open-mouthed, and it had to stand upright on the conveyor; hence the sewing mechanism had to overhang the upright bag, and therefore the fabric to be sewed must be presented to the needle in a vertical position, and the needle must reciprocate back and forth in a horizontal, instead of in the customary vertical, way. Moreover, as the bags themselves were of different heights, it is evident that the conveyor, which has continuous motion, as we have seen, and had to be co-ordinated to the intermittent motion requirement of the sew[559]*559ing mechanism, had to be so constructed that it could be adjusted to handle 'different heights of bags without disturbing such co-ordinated relation between it and the sewing machine. These several features are aptly described by one of the plaintiff’s witnesses in these words:

“In such a machine it is important that the food or carrier bolt or conveyor should ho capable of being moved up and down relatively to the sewing machine, so that the same machine may be used for bags of different sizes. The movement of the conveyor or carrier belt is automatic; it being fed or moved along- by a connection with the same driving mechanism which drives the stitching mechanism, 1 hereby insuring a proper feed of the bag as the stitching proceeds. This involves co-ordination between the automatic driving mechanism and the mechanism for raising and lowering the carrier belt, In order that the carrier bolt may he driven at the jjroper speed, irrespective of its elevation. The feed of the materia! in an ordinary sewing machine is commonly an intermittent or step-by-step feed. In dealing, however, with .so large a weight as a filled bag. it is important that it should be fed continuously, to avoid the abrupt movement of an intermittent feed.”

The final development in this art of a successful filletl-bag sewing machine, has now brought into clear light that these fundamental factors and conflicting elements confronted the art, and had to be overcome and co-ordinated, if a commercially successful machine was to be produced. It is also clear from the testimony that the need of such a machine was felt in the art, that sewing machine constructing companies of long experience recognized the difficulty of its solution, and that men of large mechanical ability addressed themselves to the problem. It has therefore seemed probable to us from the proofs that the production of such a machine was not the mere exercise of mechanical skill in assembling existing mechanisms, but rather a problem that called for a high order of inventive genius. 'Chat such was then the view of those versed in the art is shown by the correspondence in 1897 between two such experienced firms as the Washbum-Crosby Company, the real defendant in this case, and the well-known Will-cox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Company. The letter which is printed in the margin 1 shows that the Washbum-Crosby Company were un[560]*560abje to solve the problem of a filled-bag sewing machine, and had appealed for help to the Willcox people. The experts of the latter, however, were unable to see how it could be done, but advised the Wash-burn people to confer with Bigelow, the patentee, as a man with large experience in mechanical matters. It is also clear that the Timewell machine, made under patent No. 607,810 of July, 1898, applied for July 31, 1897, and several others, and which is now urged as an anticipation, was confessedly inadequate to meet the standard of efficiency required in a commercially successful bag-sewing machine.

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Bluebook (online)
253 F. 557, 165 C.C.A. 227, 1917 U.S. App. LEXIS 1307, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/union-special-mach-co-v-quaker-city-flour-mills-co-ca3-1917.