Cary v. Lovell Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 12 June 1885
• Parties: CARY and others v. LOVELL MANUF'G CO., Limited.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

24 F. 141

CARY and others v. LOVELL MANUF'G CO., Limited.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Pennsylvania.

June 12, 1885

George H. Christy, W. C. Witter, and W. H. Kenyon, for complainants.

John K Hallock and Wm. Bakewell, for defendant.

ACHESON J.

This case is now before the court on a motion for a preliminary injunction.

The suit is upon letters patent No. 116,266, granted on June 27 1871, to Alanson Cary, whose invention relates to spiral springs, usually made in a conical form, of hard-drawn steel wire coiled and forced to proper shape. In the ordinary operation of bending or coiling the wire into springs, the metal (the specification states) is unavoidably weakened, the outer portion of the wire coil being drawn or stretched while the inner portion is crushed or shortened. The invention consists in a process for restoring to the wire of the spring the strength and elasticity which it lost by this distortion, and this is effected by subjecting the spring after it has been completed in the usual manner, for about the space of eight minutes, to 'a degree of heat known as 'spring-temper heat,' which is about 600 degrees more or less,' where a complete homogeneity of the metal is produced, and increased strength, elasticity, and durability are imparted to the spring. The claim of the patent is for 'the method of tempering furniture or other coiled springs, ' substantially as described.

For the last 10 years this patentee has been involved in constant litigation in defending or enforcing his rights under his patent. In June, 1875, the Eagleton Manufacturing Company brought suit against parties manufacturing springs under the Cary patent, for an infringement of letters patent granted December 19, 1871, to one Eagleton, substantially covering the invention described and cl aimed in the previous patent to Alanson Cary. This suit, which involved the question of priority of invention as between Cary and Eagleton, resulted favorably to the former, as will appear by the opinion of the supreme court delivered May 5, 1884, in Eagleton Manuf'g Co. v. West, etc., Manuf'g Co. 111 U.S. 490; S.C. 4 S.Ct. 593. In the mean time these complainants, in October, 1879, brought suit in the United States circuit court for the Southern district of New York, against Raphael H. Wolff and others, for the infringement of the Cary patent. In that suit the defendants, (among other defenses,) by their answer, denied the validity of the patent, denied that Alanson Cary was the first inventor of the patented process, alleged prior uses and prior publications in great numbers, denied that the invention was a new or useful one, and also denied the fact of infringement. The litigation in that case was most protracted and expensive. A very large amount of testimony, by experts and other witnesses, was taken therein. The case was hotly contested throughout, and on the part of the defense the most strenuous efforts were made to defeat the patent. The able counsel for the defendants were assisted by experienced experts. The case was elaborately argued on final hearing in the fall of 1884. In February, 1885, Judge WHEELER filed an opinion sustaining the patent, finding infringement, and directing a decree in favor of the complainants. Cary v. Wolff, ante, 139.

I have been thus particular in recounting the facts connected with this litigation because I am now asked upon this interlocutory hearing to consider the question of the validity of the patent as open, and to disregard the decision made in the Second circuit. The defendants' counsel earnestly contend that the theory upon which the court there sustained the patent is false. The rationale of the Cary invention, according to Judge WHEELER, is this:

'The process of the patent (he says) does not merely add temper as a quality to steel which did not have it before; it restores the lost strength and elasticity of the wire consequent to the displacement of the particles of which it is composed, by the process of making it into springs. The discovery was that

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