Garneau v. Dozier
| Decision Date | 01 October 1880 |
| Citation | 102 U.S. 230,26 L.Ed. 133 |
| Parties | GARNEAU v. DOZIER |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Missouri.
Joseph Garneau brought his bill of complaint against James Dozier and others. It is founded upon two letters-patent, the first being a reissue granted to Hosea Ball on the fourteenth day of June, 1870, and extended for seven years from Sept. 23, 1870. The original letters were granted to Ball Sept. 23, 1856, for an alleged 'new and useful improvement in ovens,' and were surrendered and reissued Oct. 12, 1869, and again June 14, 1870. The second letters set forth in the bill were granted to Mary Ann Elizabeth McKenzie May 1, 1860, also 'for a new and useful improvement in ovens.' They were surrendered and reissued April 19, 1870, reissued again April 20, 1875, numbered 6,397, assigned to Duncan McKenzie March 24, 1874, and extended for seven years from May 1, 1874. By sundry assignments these extended reissues have become the property of the complainant, and it is for the alleged infringement of them that this suit was brought.
The bill was dismissed on a final hearing upon the pleadings and proofs, and Garneau appealed.
The case was argued by Mr. Robert H. Parkinson for the appellant, and by Mr. Edward Boyd for the appellees.
Among the defences set up in the answer of the defendants is one that strikes at the validity of the reissue of the Ball patent. It is insisted that the reissue is not for the same invention as that for which the original patent was granted, but is 'for more and other matters and things than those of which he was the original and first inventor, and more than were described or included in the specification attached to said original patent granted to him, or shown in the drawing attached thereto, or in the model forming part of the application for said patent.'
It is hardly necessary to say that if the reissue is, in fact, what the answer alleges it to be, if it is not for the same invention as that described or shown in the specification of the original patent, or in the drawings or model accompanying it, and if this clearly appears from a comparison of the two patents, the original and the reissue, then the reissue is invalid. The question is not a new one in this court. It was before us in the recent case of Ball v. Langles (supra, p. 128), in which we held the reissue to be void. We expressed our opinion in that case that in the original specification, drawing, or model of Ball's patent there was no hint of conducting the products of combustion from a fire-chamber under or below an oven directly into or through the baking-chamber, but that what was claimed or exhibited was conducting the heat or other products of combustion into flues leading from the fire-chamber, and exterior to the baking-chamber, towards the chimney, and permitting no access to the interior chamber, or the oven, except through perforations in its side or back walls. By that arrangement the oven was principally heated by radiation from its sides, and not at all by radiation directly from the fire-chamber. But the reissue was for a very different arrangement. It claimed an invention for passing the heat or products of combustion directly from the fire-chamber into the oven, not by any circuitous route, but immediately through apertures in the bottom of the oven, as well as indirectly through perforations in the side flues. This we regarded as radically different from the original invention, as new matter, for which the reissue was unauthorized. We have seen in this case no reason for changing the opinion. The Ball reissue, therefore, is held to be invalid, and its further consideration may be dismissed from the case.
We pass, then, to a consideration of the McKenzie patent, the only one that confers any...
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