O.H. Jewell Filter Co. v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 26 August 1905
• Docket Number: 2,048.
• Citation: 140 F. 340
• Parties: O. H. JEWELL FILTER CO. v. JACKSON.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

140 F. 340

O. H. JEWELL FILTER CO. v. JACKSON.

No. 2,048.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

August 26, 1905

(Syllabus by the Court.)

A patent is a contract made by the acceptance by the government of the proposition made by the inventor in his application. The rules for the interpretation of contracts govern its construction. The intention of the parties when the patent issued must be deduced, if possible, not from a part of the contract, but from the entire agreement.

The specification of a patent which forms a part of the same application as its claims must be read and construed with the latter, not for the purpose of expanding, nor for the purpose of limiting or contracting, the claims, but for the purpose of ascertaining their true meaning and the intention of the parties when they were made and allowed.

The same rule governs the construction when the words 'substantially as specified' are found in a claim for the claim is founded upon and is explained by the specification, whether these words appear in it or not. The words 'substantially as specified,' in a claim, refer to the elements, construction, and operation set forth in the specification.

Mechanical elements described in a specification, which are essential to the operation in the way portrayed in the specification of a combination claimed, and those that are thus indispensable only, may be read into a claim from the specification.

Mere changes of form of a device or of some of the mechanical elements of a combination secured by a patent will not avoid infringement, when the principle or mode of operation of the invention is adopted, and the form of the machine or of the elements changed is not the distinguishing characteristic of the invention. But, when the form of a mechanical element of a patented combination is the essence of the invention claimed, a change in it which prevents the combination in which it is embodied from utilizing the principle or mode of operation described in the patent to attain the result desired is not an infringement.

The statute (Rev. St. Sec. 4888 (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 3383)) requires an inventor to particularly point out and to claim distinctly the improvement or combination which he desires to secure as his discovery, and, when he has made his claims, he has thereby disclaimed and dedicated to the public all other devices, combinations, and improvements apparent from his specification, and claims that are not mere evasions of those claimed as his own, and he is estopped by his patent from thereafter claiming a monopoly as to such devices combinations, or improvements.

The carrying arm of the sixth claim of letters patent No 509,126, for improvements in filters, is the arm described in the specification, which is composed of two bars rigidly fastened together in such a way that one is an extension of the other and that they carry their finger bars in two series movable in different planes. The sixth claim is not infringed by the combination of a straight arm which carries its finger bars in one series in the same movable plane with the other elements of the patented combination.

The absence from a device that is alleged to infringe a patented combination of a single element of that combination is fatal to the claim of infringement.

Wm. C. Strawbridge, for appellant.

John W. Noble, for appellee.

Before SANBORN, VAN DEVANTER, and HOOK, Circuit Judges.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree of dismissal of a bill for the infringement of letters patent No. 509,126, to Omar H. Jewell and Ira H. Jewell, for improvements in the apparatus for agitating the sand or filtering materials in a gravity filter. Prior to the invention of the patentees filtering materials had been placed in a large cylindrical tank in such a filter. A vertical rotary shaft, supplied with machinery and power by means of which it could be revolved in either direction, had been extended down into the tank. To the lower end of this shaft, or to a driving head upon it, lateral horizontal arms had been secured, which reached from the shaft nearly to the sides of the tank. Vertical finger bars or teeth had been rigidly fastened upon these arms, and mechanical devices had been applied to the shaft, by means of which it could be raised and lowered at will, so that the teeth could be forced into the filtering materials and made to plow through them in either direction, or could be withdrawn at the pleasure of the operator. Letters patent to John E. Warren: No. 332,975, December 22, 1885; No. 379,349, March 13, 1888; No. 404,236, May 28, 1889. The improvement which constitutes the invention of the Jewells was founded upon these devices and in this state of the art. They adopted the cylindrical tank and the rotary shaft revoluble in either direction at will, and two arms extending in opposite directions fastened to a driving head on the lower end of this shaft. One of these arms was straight and horizontal, and it was supplied with a bar beneath it, by means of which the filtering materials could be leveled as the shaft revolved. The other arm was composed of two parts-- a straight horizontal bar and an extension, which consisted of another bar rigidly fastened by an angle iron beneath, and to the end of the horizontal bar in a lower horizontal plane and in a different vertical plane, so that it formed an obtuse angle with the horizontal bar, to which it was secured. Instead of providing the rotary shaft with mechanical devices to raise and lower it, the patentees pivoted their finger bars or teeth upon this arm, and limited their rotary movement upon the bars by projections or stops, so that, when the shaft was rotating in one direction, the stops would hold the teeth in a vertical position and they would plow through the filtering materials, while, when it was revolved in the opposite direction, they would rotate upon the arm until they would be dragged along over the sand in a position nearly horizontal. The device of pivoting one bar or tooth upon another and limiting its rotary movement by stops was not new. The patentees so stated in their specification, and their invention consisted of the discovery of a new combination of old mechanical elements.

The subject of the controversy in this case is the carrying arm, composed of the two bars moving in different planes. The defendant has formed a combination similar to that of the patentees, in which he has discarded this arm with two bars carrying two series of teeth in different planes, and has put in its place a straight horizontal bar upon which he has pivoted, and stopped his finger bars or teeth in substantially the same way used by the patentees. The first question in the case, therefore, is whether the use of this straight horizontal arm is an infringement of the sixth claim of the patent of the Jewells. That patent contains seven claims. In four of them the arm composed of the horizontal bar and the extension moving in a different plane is specified as one of the elements of the patented combination. The complainant does not assert that the combination of the defendant infringes these claims, or any other than the sixth, which reads in this way:

'(6) In an agitator for a filter, the combination of a finger bar, pivotally mounted or attached to a carrying arm upon the agitator shaft, and provided with clutch projections or stops which abut against like clutch projections upon a collar rigidly secured to said carrying arm, when it is carried around in one direction, adapted for stirring and loosening up the filter material, and which are out of contact when the motion is reversed, and the finger bar is then free to turn upon the carrying arm until the ends of the finger bar rest upon and are dragged over the top of the filter bed, substantially as and for the purpose specified.'

Is the 'carrying arm' of this claim the horizontal bar and its extension in a different horizontal plane at an obtuse angle described in the specification of the patent, or is it any carrying arm provided with pivoted finger bars limited in their rotary movements by suitable projections or stops? If it is the former, the defendant is not an infringer. If it is the latter, he cannot escape the appellation.

Many cases have been cited and persuasive arguments have been presented upon this question, but it seems to lie in a narrow compass and to be determined by the terms of the patent itself. A patent is, after all, nothing but a contract by which the government secures to the patentee the exclusive right to vend and use his invention for a few years, in consideration of the fact that he has perfected and described it and has granted its use to the public forever after. The rules for the construction of contracts apply with equal force to the interpretation of patents. The great desideratum here, as there, is to ascertain and give effect to the intention of the parties to the contract when they made it. This intention must be ascertained from the entire agreement and not from isolated parts of it, because it was not expressed by a part, but by the whole contract. When the terms of a patent are plain and the intention of the parties is manifest, the latter must prevail, and there is no room for construction. When its expressions are ambiguous and the...