Williams Calk Co. v. Neverslip Mfg. Co.

136 F. 210, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 5144
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Middle Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 14, 1905
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 136 F. 210 (Williams Calk Co. v. Neverslip Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Middle Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams Calk Co. v. Neverslip Mfg. Co., 136 F. 210, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 5144 (circtmdpa 1905).

Opinion

ARCHBAED, District Judge.

It is to be regretted that the inventor did not at the outstart, as he did later, take out a mechanical, instead of a design, patent for his horseshoe calk; for it certainly is in its useful features that the whole value of the invention resides, and not in its pleasing configuration to the eye, whatever that may contribute to it; and, the contrary being the fact, I do not see how, all things considered, either patent can be sustained. So far as the mechanical patent is concerned, everything to be found in it is portrayed in the design patent, which thus stands as an anticipation, the same as though granted to another person, except as the one was applied for within two years after the other issued, and was to the same inventor. This was expressly decided by Judge Wheeler in Cary Mfg. Co. v. Neal (C. C.) 90 Fed. 725, where he observed;

“It is said that an inventor of a machine or manufacture may have a patent for the thing and another for the design of the thing; but the description of the thing would show the design, and an inventor cannot have a valid patent, [212]*212applied for two years later, for that which is described In a prior patent to himself, any more than in one to another.”

Conceding, however, that the mechanical patent is saved from being anticipated by the design patent in the present instance, because, although it was not granted until January 22, 1901; it was applied for December 28, 1899, which was within two years of the date of the design patent, which was December 13, 1898, it is nevertheless difficult to see how the two can stand together, so as to escape the charge of double patenting. A person cannot, of course, take out two patents for the same invention (James v. Campbell, 104 U. S. 856, 26 L. Ed. 786; Mosler Safe Co. v. Mosler, 127 U. S. 354, 8 Sup. Ct. 1148, 32 L. Ed. 182; McCreary v. Pennsylvania Canal Co., 141 U. S. 459, 12 Sup. Ct. 40, 35 L. Ed. 817; Miller v. Eagle Mfg. Co., 151 U. S. 186, 14 Sup. Ct. 310, 38 L. Ed. 121); the reason being that the power to create a monopoly is exhausted by the first patent, and that a new and later patent for the same invention would operate to extend or prolong the monopoly beyond the period allowed by law (Odiorne v. Amesbury Nail Manufactory, 2 Mason, 28, Fed. Cas. No. 10,430). It does-not detract from this that one is for a design and the other for a mechanical device, where, as here, the two are indistinguishable in their characteristics, and manifestly the outcome of one and the same inventive idea. It is true that the opposite view was expressed in Collender v. Griffith (C. C.) 2 Fed. 206, where a mechanical patent, taken out more than two years after a design patent, was sustained, even though the structure in both was the same; it being held that the purposes of the two patents were different, one being for the shape and the other for the mechanical combination involved. But this does not seem to meet the objection, nor did it prevent a contrary ruling from being made in Cary Mfg. Co. v. Neal (C. C.) 90 Fed. 725, already referred to, in the same court. Even if the case can be likened to process and product) each of which may, under some circumstances, be separately patented (Thomas v. Electric Porcelain Mfg. Co. [C. C] 111 Fed. 923), it is to be observed that even there there is no unrestricted right (Mosler Safe Co. v. Mosler, 127 U. S. 354, 8 Sup. Ct. 1148, 32 L. Ed. 182). And where, as here, the whole value of that which is the subject of the design patent is to be found, as already pointed out, in its useful, and not in its artistic, features, the proof of which is shown in the attempt to have it extend-to both, a subsequent mechanical patent, the purposes of which, without any new inventive idea, is simply to protect the useful part of the same invention, certainly presents a case of double patenting, which cannot be sustained. It is -true that in the present instance, as we shall presently see, the design patent is itself invalid, not being within the .purview of the law; but that does not change the result. Not only has the patentee, by means of it, enjoyed a nominal, and until now an apparently unquestioned monopoly, with all the benefits accruing, therefrom, but it was not open to him to" set himself right for a mistake which he had made in the character of the patent by taking out another and different one for substantially the same thing. Whether this could have been accomplished by a surrender and reissue I will not undertake to say.

[213]*213These observations, however, are somewhat obiter, for, giving the mechanical patent its full force, it is clear that the defendants do not infringe. The single claim is for—

“A koreshoe calk constructed with an attaching screw-shank, a square base, radial blades having vertical flattened beveled edges, vertical straight sides, and rounded, beveled, outwardly-tapering knife-edge lower ends providing a conoidal-shaped tread, and arching recesses between the blades beneath the square base, the widening of the inner ends of the blades to form the arching recesses preventing the calk from becoming completely worn down so as to leave a wrench-hold.!’

These features are shown in the following diagrams:

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
136 F. 210, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 5144, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-calk-co-v-neverslip-mfg-co-circtmdpa-1905.