Downtown v. Yaeger Mill Co.
| Decision Date | 01 January 1880 |
| Citation | 1 F. 199 |
| Parties | DOWNTON v. YAEGER MILLING CO. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
W. G Rainey and George Harding, for plaintiff.
G. M Stewart and F. W. Cotzhausen, for defendant.
TREAT J., (orally.)
I am prepared to announce my conclusion in the case of Downton v The Yaeger Milling Company. This case was presented at great length last spring, and it was announced to counsel at that time that if the court was compelled, as matters then stood to decide the case, it would have to decide it in a certain way, but it would be more satisfactory if on certain points it could be more fully presented. That has been done, and very ably. One of the points as to which the court was troubled was whether, under the existing state of the art, this being a process patent, there was any novelty in it. Second, was the patent itself sufficiently specific in its terms to make it practicable, or, in other words, patentable in the form pursued.
It is not proposed this morning to go through the milling literature with regard to these matters, as the various stages of all the matters involved were fully considered at the time of the hearing of the milling cases before Judges Dillon, Nelson and myself. We were then very fully instructed as to this new process, and also as to the state of the art when the new process arose, and the conclusions announced in that case are very familiar to the counsel in this case, and to the milling public generally, by this time.
Now the mills using this new process interject rolls at various stages in connection with grinding, and, after purifying, regrinding the purified middlings. Counsel were asked whether they construed this particular patent as covering any use of rolls on purified middlings at any stage of the successive grindings, or whether, under their construction of the patent, it was a use of rolls, one or more, at a stage intermediate the first and second grindings. Counsel were understood to say that the interjection of such rolls at any one of these successive stages was within the terms of the patent. The importance of that, if the testimony is understood, relates to the question of infringement.
There was a controversy at an early stage of this case, growing out of the transactions between Downton, Allis & Co., of Milwaukee, and this defendant, Yaeger. Judge Dillon and myself disagreed in opinion with regard to the effect of the paper transactions involved, but his ruling with regard to the matter was necessarily the ruling in the case. He held that if there was an infringement of this patent then the defendant must answer, except as to the two chilled iron rolls interposed between the first and second grindings according to the terms of the patent, because Allis & Co. who were to some extent assignees in this matter, made those rolls according to Downton's description. Downton himself superintending the whole matter and putting them in the mill; the contention being on the part of Downton that he informed these parties who had bought these rolls, which came under a subsequent patent, that whilst he put them in they must give him a royalty under his process patent, and hence any use of the rolls by those parties did not exonerate them from a royalty therefor. Judge Dillon and I concurred as to those two; said they were supposed to have been put there for some purpose. They were put there by the plaintiff, and under his very patent, and if it is said that they were put...
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