Farmers' Mfg. Co. v. Spruks Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 02 February 1904
• Docket Number: 493.
• Citation: 127 F. 691
• Parties: FARMERS' MFG. CO. v. SPRUKS MFG. CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

127 F. 691

FARMERS' MFG. CO. v. SPRUKS MFG. CO. et al.

No. 493.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

February 2, 1904

E. T Fenwick and H. H. Bliss, for appellant.

Hector T. Fenton and W. B. Rodman, for appellees.

Before GOFF and SIMONTON, Circuit Judges, and BRAWLEY, District Judge.

BRAWLEY District Judge.

This suit was brought by the Farmers' Manufacturing Company assignee of John F. East, against the Spruks Manufacturing Company and others, to enjoin the infringement of letters patent No. 429,021, dated May 27 1890, for an improvement in barrels. The court below decided that the East patent was invalid, in that it did not involve anything more than ordinary mechanical skill, in view of the extensive prior art knowledge; and, second, that there was no infringement of the East patent by defendants.

The East patent contains four clauses of claim. The proofs and argument relate to an allegation of infringement of claims 1 and 3, only, which are as follows:

'(1) A barrel or receptacle having its sides composed of a sheet of veneer provided with parallel slits arranged lengthwise of the barrel, and terminating at a distance from the edges of the sheet, and leaving the edges of the veneer sheet continuous or integral, as shown and described.'

'(3) A barrel or receptacle having its sides composed of a sheet of veneer provided with parallel slits arranged lengthwise of the barrel, and terminating at a distance from the edges of the sheet, and expanded in the middle to a greater diameter than at the ends, substantially as shown and described.'

In his statement of invention, East says:

'I am aware that it is not new to make barrels of veneer, and that the ends of a veneer barrel have been drawn together by first slitting the edges of the veneer blank in order to get the bilge or curve to the barrel, and I do not claim any such construction.'

His invention, as stated by him--

'Consists of a barrel composed of a veneer blank cut through its middle with a series of parallel slits extending transversely to the blank and longitudinally to the barrel, but not out to either edge of the blank, thus leaving the edges of the blank, which form the chines of the barrel, continuous or unsevered, while the middle cut portion is extended to get the bilge or curve to the barrel, and also to form ventilating openings.'

The first patent for a barrel made of veneer was issued to Sheridan Roberts, May 14, 1861, and reissued as No. 6,044, September 8, 1874; and the opinion of the court below, so far as it adjudges East's patent invalid, seems to hinge upon that. That invention relates to the formation of the body of the barrel in volute sheets cut or removed from the surface of solid cylinders, and forming the bulge of the barrel by forming notches or slots from the edges toward the center, or cutting out or removing gores or wedge-shaped pieces from each edge, so that, by bringing these cut surfaces into contact by means of hooping the body of the barrel, the barrel thus formed will have the desired bulge. An examination of this patent discloses that its design was to form a tight barrel, and a barrel shape, as contradistinguished from a mere cylinder, was obtained by cutting out gores or wedge-shaped pieces at the ends; and, by drawing in the veneer sheet at the joined ends, the gore spaces would be closed up. The vice of Roberts' patent was that it did not have that peculiar curvature at its sides, continuous from top to bottom and at every vertical line, which for ages has been known to be necessary for giving the greatest strength. It is this arch shape throughout, at every vertical line of its sides from top to bottom, that distinguishes a barrel from a cylinder. Robert's patent would produce a package with a cylindrical central zone and two cone-like ends. What he refers to in his statement of invention as producing the 'desired bulge,' by the drawing together of the ends from which wedge-shaped pieces had been cut, would not be that bilge with uniform curvature from top to bottom so essential to a barrel-shaped barrel. The compressing the ends of the cylinder could have no other effect than to produce the semblance of a bulge, in that it was wider at the center than at the ends. It could have no bulging form of any spheroidal sort, and must remain simply a cylinder in the center, with the weakness characteristic of mere cylinders-- of collapsing under pressure. Roberts' so-called barrel, therefore, is nothing more than a cylinder with a wider diameter and with cone-shaped ends, and lacks the curve or true bilge at the central zone, so essential to the strength of a barrel. It is probably due to this essential vice that barrels made after Robert's device never came to be commercially successful, although the testimony shows that prolonged and expensive efforts were made to manufacture on the Roberts plan. Patent was granted to him in 1861, and renewed in 1874. It had been before the public for 29 years when East's application was before the Patent Office, and must have been thoroughly known to the commissioner when East's application was considered, and had proved to be inoperative and worthless. Robert's barrel was not, and was not intended to be, a ventilating barrel. Considering this patent as an alleged limiting or anticipating document, what would a person skilled in the art of barrel making produce from inspecting the drawings of the patent and following it? Nothing but a tight, unventilated barrel, with a cylindrical center and cones at the ends. For nearly 30 years it had been on the public record without producing any effect on the art or trade of barrel making. It cannot be said that a patent for a device which fails to accomplish the desired end is an anticipation of one which successfully accomplishes it.

The other patent referred to in the court below is that of Elijah B. Georgia, No. 164,542, dated June 15, 1875. This invention, as stated in the application--

'Relates to means whereby fruits may be packed, transported, and kept without deterioration for a considerable period. The invention consists in having the staves or heads or both sawed or incised longitudinally, or in the direction of the grain, so as to get the necessary aeration without weakening materially the stave.'

It does not seem to us that this Georgia patent has any real pertinency to the matter involved in this controversy, as this barrel is essentially different in structure from that involved in the patent in suit. This is an ordinary stave barrel with apertures or ventilators. East does not pretend to have been the first to make ventilators in a stave barrel. The essence of his invention and the characteristic thing about it, was that for the first time a ventilated barrel was made of veneer, and the central, outward, bulging bend at the central zone was secured by means of precisely arranged incisions or indentations in the veneer sheet, which thus relieved the fibers at the middle of the strain.

Certain other patents were offered in evidence such as the fruit basket of Cook, No. 24,723; the cherry box of Mabbett, No. 73,352, and the wooden mat of Bailey, No. 417,215. They require little notice, as it is not contended that East is the first to have devised ventilating receptacles for fruit, or the first to have invented the use of veneer for the making of such packages.

The need of a ventilated barrel for the shipment of vegetables had been greatly felt along the whole South Atlantic Coast by those engaged in truck farming, and, previous to East's invention, secondhand flour barrels, with holes chopped by hand, were commonly used for this purpose. These were found to be inconvenient, expensive, and sometimes unsanitary; and the testimony shows that, after East's invention, barrels were made of veneer from a gum tree which grows abundantly in that region, and put upon the market at a cost of about one-half of the old barrels, and that about a million of such barrels are now being annually made and sold for the shipment of potatoes alone, and that, except the recently produced barrel of the defendant, there is no other ventilated veneer barrel used in that region but that manufactured by the complainant company or its licensees; and there is also testimony that parties interested in the defendant company including Mr. Canfield, its general manager, importuned the complainants for the right to manufacture their barrels, but were refused because they had already granted a license for the territory which he was endeavoring to secure. The testimony is abundant that the East barrel had gone into general use, that the public had attested its superior utility and value by adopting the same, and that it had superseded all other barrels previously used for like purposes. The fact that prior devices, such as the Roberts and the Georgia barrel, had not been successful, and that the East barrel secured general use, that the public had attested its...