Anderson v. Collins

• Decision Date: 28 April 1903
• Docket Number: 1,766.
• Citation: 122 F. 451
• Parties: ANDERSON v. COLLINS.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

122 F. 451

ANDERSON v. COLLINS.

No. 1,766.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

April 28, 1903

Syllabus by the Court.

The use of a different, but mechanically equivalent, method or material to construct some of the elements of a patented combination will not avoid infringement where the principle or mode of operation is adopted, and the elements, when constructed, perform the same functions by the same means as or by mechanically equivalent means to, those described in the patent.

The legal presumption of no infringement which arises from a subsequent patent upon a device that is alleged to infringe a prior patent is overcome by the finding of infringement by the trial court, which must be presumed to be correct, unless an obvious error of law or a serious mistake of fact is disclosed.

The combination described in letters patent No. 621,219, issued March 14, 1899, to George A. Burwell, infringes claims 4, 7 8, 9, and 10 of letters patent No. 595,696, issued December 21, 1897, to George J. S. Collins.

It is indispensable to the maintenance of the statutory defense (Act July 8, 1870, 16 Stat. 208, c. 230, Sec. 61 (3 U.S.Comp.St. 1901, p. 3394, Sec. 4920)) that the device had been patented before the patentee under the patent in suit invented it that the defensive patent should have been issued before the patentee under the patent in suit made his invention. A prior application for the patent, or a prior invention by the patentee under the defensive patent, will not sustain this defense.

Where each of several applications which subsequently ripen into patents to the same inventor discloses all the inventions claimed in all the applications, and they are all pending at the same time, no one of the applications or patents can be used to anticipate any of the claims of any of the others which it does not itself claim and secure.

Neither the letters patent 585,909 to Collins nor the application on which it is founded anticipates claims 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 of letters patent 595,696 to the same inventor.

A new combination of old elements, whereby an old result is attained in a more facile, economical and efficient way, may be protected by a patent.

Where the advance toward perfection in an art consists of many intermediate steps, and several inventors form different combinations or improvements, which score decided advances in the art, and accomplish the desired result with varying degrees of success, each is entitled to his own combination so long as it differs from those of him competitors and does not include theirs.

The combination of claims 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 of letters patent 595,696, to George J. S. Collins, dated December 21, 1897, is novel, useful, the product of the intuitive genius of the inventor, and these claims of the patent are valid.

Charles K. Offield and Charles C. Linthicum (Albert M. Austen, on the brief), for appellant.

A. C. Paul, for appellee.

Before CALDWELL, SANBORN, and THAYER, Circuit Judges.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree which adjudged the device described in the specification of letters patent No. 621,219, issued to George A. Burwell on March 14, 1899, to be an infringement of the fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth claims of letters patent No. 595,696, issued to George J. S. Collins on December 21, 1897. The patented structure is a combination of old elements, and the decree is assailed upon the grounds that there was no invention in the combination, and that Burwell's device was not an infringement upon it. Both structures are for housings or means for holding the roller elements in roller bearings in proper relations to each other while they are in operation, and for keeping them together in the same relation when they are removed from the roller race.

When Collins conceived his device, roller bearings were in common use. The main problem that was before those engaged in improvements in the art was to construct these bearings so that they would develop the least friction, and many machines had been made and patented in which an annular roller race between the journal and the journal box or the hub, main supporting rollers therein, and smaller separating rollers were common and familiar elements. On January 20, 1896, Collins had applied for a patent, which was subsequently issued to him on July 6, 1897, as No. 585,909, for an improvement in roller bearings, which disclosed a bearing consisting of an annular roller race in a journal box, main supporting balls, and separating devices therein. Between each two of the main supporting balls a separating device, consisting of two plates of triangular form, with a cylindrical roller between them at each angle, was so placed that when the wheel was in operation the balls could not touch each other, and there was no sliding contact among any of the parts, save only the trunnions of two of the little cylinders, which were extended so that their ends might come in contact with the side walls of the roller race, and thus prevent any sliding contact of the triangular plates therewith. This patent shows another separator, which consists of two cylindrical rollers, engaged at their ends with parallel side members and two small balls placed between the cylinders and their plates and the inner circumferential wall of the journal box. But in the structures shown in this patent the main supporting balls and the separating devices were not held together in any fixed relation to each other, and hence they could not be kept in their proper relation when removed from the roller race. There was no caging or housing to contain them and keep them in place.

The desideratum which Collins sought to reach in the combination of the patent here in suit was a housing or caging which would hold the main supporting balls and the cylinders or rollers which separated them in such a relation to each other and the cage that when in operation there would be no sliding friction between any of the walls of the roller race and any of its contents, that the balls and the separating devices should have a rolling, and not a sliding, contact, and that all the contents of the roller race could be removed bodily therefrom without disturbing their fixed relations to each other. He says in his specification:

'My present invention relates more particularly to means for connecting the several separating devices, and also means whereby all the roller elements are rotatably held in a housing, and are thus capable of being bodily removed from the journal simultaneously without disturbing the relative position of said roller elements.'

Figures 4 and 5 accompanying the specification, and claims 8 and 10 of this patent, which are fair samples of the claims in suit, fairly show the device which Collins conceived and perfected to accomplish his purpose. They are here reproduced:

(Image Omitted)

'(8) A housing for the roller elements of a ball-bearing comprising two ring plates, a plurality of ball-separating devices rotatably secured at intervals between the plates at or near their inner margins, said rings being provided with a socket or recess between each separating device, a plurality of roller elements in said sockets and means for securing the plates at a suitable distance apart, whereby said roller elements may partially project beyond the plane of the outer surfaces of said plates, and also project peripherally between them as and for the purpose specified.'

'(10) In a roller bearing, the combination with an axle provided with suitable bearing surfaces, a hub provided with a ball cup and roller elements located in the race formed thereby, ball-separating devices between the roller elements of a housing for confining the roller elements, whereby said housing and roller elements may be removed from the bearing without disturbing the relation of the balls to each other.'

Two great advantages which this combination secured are that it so held the roller elements of a ball-bearing wheel in operation that every bearing upon any of the walls of the roller race and between the balls and the separating devices was a rotating, and not a sliding, bearing, and (2) that it enabled the operator to remove all the contents of the roller race bodily therefrom without any change in their relations to each other. The housing which Collins constructed is so made that the bearing balls project on each side beyond the cage so that the latter cannot come in contact with the journal, the side walls, or the inner circumferential wall of the roller race.

Burwell's combination, which the defendant uses, accomplishes the same results by a similar caging, preferably made, the patentee says in his specification, out of a single sheet of stamped metal, bent into the same form of housing which Collins constructed out of two annular rings. Below is a copy of figure 1 of the drawings attached to the Burwell patent, in the upper part of which the stamped plate is shown bent into its final shape, while the lower part discloses a part of the sheet before it is bent.

(Image Omitted)

The brackets or arms, F, are made integrally with the main body of the housing, and are first bent at right angles at the outer periphery of the main body of the cage, and then again at right angles toward its center, so as to embrace the ends of the separating rollers, D, which are mounted on pins, d the ends of which are journaled in the bent plate. When the plate has been thus bent into final shape, the main supporting balls protrude through the cage in four directions, exactly as in the combination of Collins, so that every contact with the walls of the roller race is a rotating, and not a sliding, contact. The separating devices are held in the same relative...