Hunt v. Armour & Co.
| Decision Date | 14 March 1950 |
| Docket Number | No. 48 C 842.,48 C 842. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
| Parties | HUNT et al. v. ARMOUR & CO. |
Richey & Watts, by H. F. McNenny and Frederic B. Schramm, all of Cleveland, Ohio, and Davis, Lindsey, Hibben & Noyes, by George N. Hibben, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs Anna May Hunt and Greenbrier Co.
Bair & Freeman, by Will Freeman and Norman Lettvin, all of Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff Barker Poultry Equipment Co.
Dawson, Ooms, Booth & Spangenberg, by Casper W. Ooms, George E. Frost and Owen J. Ooms, all of Chicago, Ill., for defendant Armour and Co.
George R. Hunt, now deceased, received patent No. 2,300,157 on Feather-Picking Apparatus, which was issued to him on October 27, 1942 and which is now in suit. His widow, Anna May Hunt, Administratrix of his estate, and Greenbrier Company, the exclusive licensee of the Hunt patent, are the original plaintiffs herein, Barker Poultry Equipment Co. being later joined as co-plaintiff upon motion of defendant.
It is of record and admitted that the ownership of said patent is as above stated. Because the joining of Barker Poultry Equipment Co. raised issues not directly relevant to those raised by the complaint and answer, it was ordered that the main issues of infringement and validity be tried and that all other issues be separated therefrom, the court retaining jurisdiction for that purpose.
Defendant Armour and Company is charged with the infringement of claims 2, 3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17 and 19 of the patent by reason of its use of various machines made by Johnson and Albright.
Defendant interposes the usual defenses of invalidity and noninfringement, and the additional defense of misuse of the patent.
It should be noted at the outset that the validity of this patent and the claims above-mentioned has been sustained by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Campbell et al. v. Mueller, et al., and Mueller et al. v. Campbell et al., 159 F.2d 803, and Wolfinger v. Mueller et al., 165 F.2d 844; by the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, Mueller et al. v. Wolfinger, 68 F.Supp. 485; and by the District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, Cedar Rapids Division, Mueller et al. v. Pickwick Corporation, et al.1
It is strongly urged upon me that I should disregard those decisions because they are not from my own circuit and because the District Court decisions are not binding upon me. I cannot agree with this view. It is my opinion that until the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit disagrees therewith I am bound by the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and that although the district court cases may not be binding upon me they are at least persuasive, and I am strongly inclined to agree with their reasoning. If there is to be a difference between the courts of appeals of the different circuits I think it more appropriate that that situation should be created by the Court of Appeals than by me as a district judge.
On the question of validity the defendant, as is usual in such cases, depends largely on the prior art and has gone to considerable trouble and expense trying to apply what they call the prior art to the case at bar. I have resolved that point by determining and holding that there is no prior art applicable to this case. It is my holding, and the record shows conclusively, that until the Hunt patent and the disclosures made by Hunt there was never any machine built that successfully picked chickens mechanically. Such prior art as has been disclosed consists entirely of "paper" patents, none of which has ever been built or operated in accordance with the disclosures of those patents. The only one of them which is even worthy of description is the Bouda patent, No. 1,372,595, filed October 4, 1920. The drawings and description of this theoretical chicken-picking machine disclose that it was the intention of the inventor that the feathers should be plucked by means of rollers arranged somewhat in the fashion of a cornhusking machine or an oldfashioned corn shredder, and that the remaining feathers should be wiped off by rubber paddles. It is apparent from the drawings and gear ratios that if the machine were operated at such a speed as to give any effect to the rubber paddles the rollers would be turning at such a speed that no feather could even be touched, and it is admitted that no such machine was ever built.
However, subsequent to the commencement of this suit defendant constructed at its Kansas City plant an experimental machine which entirely omitted the featherpicking rollers and embodied only the rubber paddles which Bouda had described as being useful for wiping purposes only. This machine was attempted to be demonstrated at Kansas City, and motion pictures were taken of the so-called demonstration, but it was in no way successful. Out of ten birds that were attempted to be picked one had its head pulled off, another had a leg bruised so as to render it unmarketable, and some others were bruised so as to destroy or depreciate their commercial value. Even so, as above noted, this experimental machine was in no sense a reproduction of the disclosures made by Bouda. It should be noted that the partial Bouda machine was built for the purposes of this litigation, and motion pictures of its operation were shown to the trial court and are available for view by the Court of Appeals.
The other paper patents referred to were Richards, No. 1,755,665; Griggs, No. 920,566; and Swanson, No. 1,889,228. None of these is close enough to the patent in suit to require minute description or extended discussion. Each and everyone of them, including Bouda, was merely an inventor's dream. None of them was ever built and none of them ever picked a chicken. It is enough to say that Defendant's Exhibits 34 and 35 omit the rollers which were Bouda's means of plucking; Defendant's Exhibit 36, supposed to illustrate the Richards patent, was not built in accordance with the Richards specification. It follows that the defense of prior art must fail and be disregarded. Marr Oil Heat Mach. Corp. et al. v. Hardinge Bros. Inc., D.C., 20 F.2d 241.
It is my holding that the patent is valid as to all of the claims in suit; and, furthermore, that it is a pioneer patent, basic in nature, and constituted novel invention in a new field which had never before been successfully entered by any mechanical device.
The claims are divided into two groups; i. e., the machine claims, being Nos. 2, 3, 7, 10 and 17, and the finger claims, being Nos. 12, 14 and 19.
The machine claims are as follows:
The finger claims are as follows:
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