Enterprise Mfg. Co. v. Sargent

• Decision Date: 01 March 1888
• Citation: 34 F. 134
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: ENTERPRISE MANUF'G CO. v. SARGENT et al.

34 F. 134

ENTERPRISE MANUF'G CO. v. SARGENT et al.

United States Circuit Court, D. Connecticut.

March 1, 1888

Charles Howson and Chas. E. Mitchell, for plaintiff.

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

SHIPMAN J.

This is a bill in equity to restrain the defendants from the alleged infringement of the first, second, sixth, tenth, and thirteenth claims of letters patent No. 271,398, dated January 30, 1883, to John G. Baker, for improvements in mechanism for cutting up plastic or yielding substances. Upon a motion for a preliminary injunction in this case, the first and second claims of the patent, the history of the art, so far as then disclosed, and the patentability of the invention were examined. Manufacturing Co. v. Sargent, 28 F 185. It is not necessary to repeat the facts or the conclusions which were stated in the opinion upon that motion. The case has now been prepared with great care and has been argued with equal ability. The only important prior patent which was not used upon the motion, and which is now in the case, is the Miles patent of 1861. In the fact that the principal reliance for the cutting of the meat is upon the stationary and moving cutters in the body of the machine before the meat is delivered to the perforated plate, the device does not differ from the Miles patent of 1864. The manner in which the cutting is performed in the earlier machine differs from the operation of the cutting knives of the later patent. The case is smaller at the delivery end than at the hopper end, and has inside of it, at the hopper end, spiral grooves which occupy about half the length of the case, the other half towards the delivery end having longitudinal grooves. The rotating shaft has spiral blades the edges of which and the edges of the longitudinal ribs slide past each other, like the edges of a pair of shears, and the two edges constantly cut or shear the meat as it passes from one rib to the next. At the extreme end of the machine is a perforated plate against which the ends of the spiral move, the openings in the plate being sharpened on one side, and some cutting is accomplished by the blade ends of the spirals against these sharpened edges, but the principal part is done, as in the Miles patent of 1864, by the revolving blades or knives in the body of the machine. There is no difference in the principle upon which the two Miles machines operate,--that of a cutting action upon the meat before it reaches the perforated plate. As will be more fully stated hereafter, the Baker machine abandoned cutting action by the aid of cutters around the shaft, and relied upon a rotating knife on the inside of the perforated plate; and, while it is true that the blunt ends of the Miles spirals of the patent of 1861 moving against the sharpened edges of its perforated plate accomplished some cutting, there is no analogy between that sort of cutting action and that produced by a revolving knife blade passing over the edges of a perforated plate. The Baker machine is not so palpable an improvement over the Miles patent of 1861 as it is over the Miles patent of 1864, but it is an improvement of the same kind, which introduced a new operating principle into the machine, and evinced invention.

As much more time was spent, upon this hearing, in the discussion of the Dollman English patent than was given to it upon the hearing of the motion, the device of that patent requires especial mention. The case has a smooth interior, and a series of horizontal knives at the hopper end, which extend about half the length of the case. At the hopper end of the hollow shaft, within the case, is a series of oblique or screw-like blades, which, on the rotation of the shaft, pass between the fixed knives. The other part of the shaft carries an Archimedean screw, having nearly the same diameter as the interior of the cylinder. 'That end of the case in which the Archimedean screw is situated is closed by a plate of hardened and tempered steel, having in it a series of either circular or oblong holes, the sides of which are inclined to either; the smaller diameter of the holes being on the external side of the plate. The end of the solid internal axis (within the hollow shaft) projects through the center of this plate, and carries one, two, or more radial, or nearly radial, cutting blades, working closely upon the perforated steel plate closing the case. ' The meat is carried by the rotating blades against the fixed knives, and is cut into small pieces, which are carried by the screw to the end of the case. The intent of the inventor was that these pieces should be forced through the holes in the plate, and that, as they were forced through, the rotating blades passing rapidly over the plate should form cutters with the sharp edges of the holes and mince the material. The patent also says 'The perforated plate, and cutters working against it, may be used alone for effecting the mincing, instead of in combination with the rotating blades and fixed horizontal knives, as described. ' The patentee mounts his rotary knife, which is outside the perforated plate, upon a shaft, independent of the feeding screw, in order that the knife may be enabled, by suitable gearing, to rotate at a higher rate of speed than that at which the feed-screw operates. This characteristic is not deviated from in the different forms of machine which he suggests. The defendant seeks to maintain that if, discarding the independent gearing, the machine is constructed in accordance with the alternative method which is suggested in the patent, viz., by the use of the perforated plate and cutters alone, it will, although the cutter is on the outside of the plate, be such an approximation to the Baker device that the latter possesses no patentable novelty. If, having discarded the independent gearing and the...