Enterprise Mfg. Co. v. Sargent

• Decision Date: 01 January 1886
• Citation: 28 F. 185
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: ENTERPRISE MANUF'G CO., PENNSYLVANIA, v. SARGENT and others. [1]

28 F. 185

ENTERPRISE MANUF'G CO., PENNSYLVANIA, v. SARGENT and others. ^[1]

United States Circuit Court, D. Connecticut.

1886

Charles Howson and Charles E. Mitchell, for plaintiff.

John K Beach and B. F. Thurston, for defendants.

SHIPMAN J.

This is a motion for a preliminary injunction to restrain the defendants from the alleged infringement of letters patent No. 271,398, dated January 30, 1883, to John G. Baker assignor, to the plaintiff, for a machine for mincing meat and other plastic or yielding substances. The question, so far as the first and second claims are concerned, are, (1) in view of the undisputed state of the art, that of invention and (2) that of infringement.

The meat-cutter described in the United States patent to Purches Miles, of July 13, 1864, and in the English patent for the same invention to Joseph Donnell, of September 23, 1865, was a hollow cylinder, into which, at one end, the uncut material was fed, a perforated plate at the other end, a rotating knife within the casing, with its cutting edges against the inner face of the perforated plate, and stationary and moving cutting knives arranged, near the hopper, into which the machine was fed, around a revolving shaft, which connected the hopper with the plate, and, by the aid of a spiral wing fed the material to the plate. The cutting knives upon the shaft did the principal cutting work before the plate was reached. The meat-cutter of Hubert Dollman's English patent of 1881, the candy-cutter of E. Belling's United States patent of 1859, and the soft-dough machine of H. Dusch's United States patent of 1878, had a hollow cylinder, a revolving screw, a perforated plate, and a rotating knife outside the plate.

These two systems substantially comprised the state of the art at the date of the Baker patent, for it is not necessary to dwell upon the United States patent to G. A. Coffman, of February 28, 1845, for a meat-cutter which consisted of a hollow case, a series of chopping cutters, a propeller wheel, a perforated plate, and a knife on the outside of the plate, thus having the Miles cutters upon the shaft inside the case, and the Dollman knife outside the plate. A Miles machine, known as the 'Challenge,' has, in addition to its cutting knives around the shaft, two rotating knives, one outside and the other inside the plate. The Baker device dispensed with the cutters around the shaft, and relied for its cutting mechanism upon a rotating knife on the inside of the perforated plate. The substantial portions of the machine are a hollow casing, a perforated plate near the end of the casing, a rotating knife acting against the inner face of the plate, a forcing screw, the continuous thread of which extends to or nearly to the knife, and which rotated with the latter. The interior of the casing, in all of the drawings except one, and in the exhibits, is corrugated by longitudinal grooves, each of which is inclined on one side, and presents an abrupt retaining shoulder on the other. These corrugations do not extend to the outer end of the casing.

The first and second claims are as follows:

'(1) The combination, in a machine for cutting up plastic or yielding substances, of the following instrumentalities, namely: First, a casing for containing the substances to be cut up; second, a perforated plate at or near the end of the casing; third, a device for forcing the crude mass forward in the casing, and against the said plate, without otherwise disturbing the integrity of the said mass; and, fourth, a knife operating against the inner face of the plate, and serving as the sole means, in connection with the said plate, of cutting up the mass, by severing therefrom the portions which enter the perforations,-- all

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