52 F. 314 (4th Cir. 1892), 18, Ashton Valve Co. v. Coale Muffler & Safety Valve Co.
| Date | 11 October 1892 |
| Docket Number | 18 |
| Citation | 52 F. 314 |
| Parties | ASHTON VALVE CO. v. COALE MUFFLER & SAFETY VALVE CO. et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
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Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of
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J. E. Maynadier, for appellant
W. J. O'Brien and H. T. Fenton, for appellees.
Before GOFF, Circuit Judge, and HUGHES and SIMONTON, District Judges.
HUGHES, District Judge.
This suit relates to safety valves applied to steam boilers, particularly to those used on the locomotive engines of railroads. It presents two questions for adjudication. One is whether the first claim in complainant's patent, No. 200,119, was patentable, and has been infringed by defendant in the safety valves which it manufactures and sells, one of which is exhibited with the evidence in this cause. The other question is whether the defendant, in making and using his combined safety valve and muffler described in patent 297,066, one of which is exhibited, infringes complainant's combination of safety valve and muffler, described in patent 299,503. The court below decreed for the defendant on each of these questions. To this decree the complainant has filed 20 assignments of error. It is hardly conceivable that the court below could have fallen into as many as 20 distinct, different errors in passing upon the two questions at issue; and this court will not enter seriatim into an examination of these several assignments, but will treat the subject in a more compendious manner.
Between 40 and 50 exhibits have been filed in the evidence in this case, consisting, for the most part, of patents granted to various persons by the United States and Great Britain, illustrated by copies of the original drawings, and several of them also by models of machines in actual use. They show the evolution through which the steam safety valve has passed in the last quarter of a century. They show that neither one of the patents, 200,119, 297,066, or 299,503, with which we are immediately concerned, embraces any novel principle, and that these patents embody only some change of mechanical form, arrangement, or combination more or less variant from safety valves and muffler attachments previously in use. The utmost claim of their authors (with an exception that will appear in the sequel) is for novelty in the combination of known devices, and not novelty in any principle discovered. It is true that the combination of known devices in such manner as to produce results new in kind or character is patentable; yet, when patents for the combination of known devices in such manner as to produce results new and better only in degree than others previously produced are brought before the courts, they are held to be nonpatentable.
In further introduction to the subject before the court, a few things may be premised about safety valves and mufflers. The original safety valve was used in connection with a spring,-- usually a spiral spring,-- by which the amount of pressure to be allowed in the boiler before escape could be regulated. This spring safety valve was at first not inclosed from the outer air. Afterwards a metallic cylindrical chamber or box was placed over it, with more or less vent in the top for the outlet of any steam that might find its way into this box, as a safeguard
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against back pressure. Experience with this simple form of safety valve taught that, while it was easy enough to contrive a valve which would relieve the boiler, yet it was difficult to devise one which, while it opened against the increasing resistance of the spring, would close quickly under the pressure of the same spring against the steam. It was found in practice that these valves were liable either to open too long, allowing too great an escape and a waste of steam, or not long enough to permit the escape of the amount of steam necessary to safety.
Then came the valve called the 'pop valve,' invented by Richardson, patented in 1866 and 1869, which consisted of an addition to the ordinary safety valve. Its inventor, describing it, says in substance: It consists in forming the valve with an additional surface outside of the ground joint for the escaping steam to act against; this additional surface being surrounded with an overlapping lip, rim, or flange, which projects downwards sufficiently to leave but a narrow escape for the steam when the valve is open, but which, although of greater diameter than the valve seat, yet, by means of the lap, presents a less area of opening for the escape of steam than is produced at the valve seat; so that the steam which escapes through the area between the valve and seat shall exert pressure against the additional surrounding surface, and thereby not only open the valve completely, but hold it up until the pressure of steam in the boiler falls below the pressure by which the valve was opened. This huddling of the steam after its passage through the valve by means of an additional chamber having a restricted outlet, formed by its lap or flange, which reaches down nearly to the surface surrounding the valve seat, accomplished the desideratum which the simple safety valve failed to do; the additional chamber, its flange, and its restricted outlet for the steam, constituting what has become known as the 'pop valve.' The discharge of steam from the simple valve and the...
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