Broadnax v. Central Stock-Yard & Transit Co.
| Decision Date | 28 September 1880 |
| Citation | 4 F. 214 |
| Parties | BROADNAX v. THE CENTRAL STOCK YARD & TRANSIT COMPANY. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
Amos Broadnax, for complainant.
Leon Abbot, for defendant.
NIXON D.J.
The bill is filed in this case against the defendant corporation for infringing re-issued letters patent, No. 5,925, dated June 23, 1874, for improvement in apparatus for rendering lard and tallow and other animal matter, and for crisping and drying the refuse thereof. The original letters patent numbered 81,473, were granted to the complainant September 1 1868. The bill of complaint alleges that the first claim of the re-issue has been infringed. This claim is for a stationary tank enclosed in a stationary heating chamber, and fitted with a horizontal rotating stirrer, by which the material under treatment is thrown over and over while it is being rendered or dried.
The principal defences insisted upon at the hearing were-- First that the re-issued patent was void, (a) because the re-issue embraced more than the original patent; (b) because the alleged invention was not new; and (c) because it was useless and inoperative. Second, that the devices used by the defendants did not infringe.
If either defence prevail there must be a decree for the defendants. What is the complainant's patent? It has reference to mechanism or a combination of ingredients for the separation of grease or tallow from animal tissue or fiber. Two modes have long been in use for accomplishing this result-- one by steam and hot water, where the rough fat or offal is put into a tank or kettle, and steam is injected in a sufficient quantity and temperature to liquify the fat; and the other by the application of dry external heat to the vessel containing the tissue or fiber, whereby the fat is melted and then drawn off in various ways. One is known as the wet and the other as the dry rendering. Two of the defendant's expert witnesses, Quimby and Reilly, agree that the former process is so much more efficient than the latter, in separating the fat from the animal fiber, that the residuum obtained requires a different treatment to prepare it for use. The elimination of the grease or tallow is so much more complete, that it is only necessary to evaporate the surplus water to have the residual mas fit for commercial purposes; whereas, by the dry process, so much of the fat still adheres to the fiber that loss would ensue unless independent mechanical treatment is resorted to, by pressure or squeezing, to remove the adhering fat before the scraps or cracklings are prepared for fertilizers.
The complainant has sought to remedy the practical inconvenience and expense resulting from the need of these separate processes for rendering and drying, by claiming in his re-issue such a combination of a heating chamber, tank, and stirrer that the material is rendered and the refuse dried in one continuous process in the same apparatus.
In the original letters patent, the patentee, in stating the history of the art, describes both methods and suggests the principal objection to each. The object of his invention was to remedy these defects by furnishing a combination of instrumentalities, all of which were old, but claimed to be new in their combination and results. He does not pretend that the combination has, in itself, any capacity to produce any useful result, and nowhere therein does he indicate that it may be used except in connection with external dry heat. But, in the re-issue, he states broadly that his invention extends to whatever form the apparatus, in its various forms, may take, or in whatever form the heat may be applied, or however the furnace may be combined with the apparatus.
The counsel for the defendant, at the hearing, insisted that this was an enlargement of the scope of the patent; that more was claimed than was suggested in the original; and that hence the re-issue was void, not being for the same invention.
I do not think the re-issue is obnoxious to such a charge. In view of the state of the art, an apparatus for rendering the fat and drying the refuse of animal matter is patentable, apart from any connection with other instrumentalities by which it is to be made operative and efficient. Because one mode only is indicated in the original, the...
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Continental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co.
...trade and manufacture, and has assumed upon grounds of public policy to protect the public right of freedom in business. In the Broadnax Case (C.C.) 4 F. 214, it was simply a whether practical use was necessary to preserve a patent, and involved no consideration of the question as to the ef......