Hildreth v. Mastoras
| Citation | 42 S.Ct. 20,66 L.Ed. 112,257 U.S. 27 |
| Decision Date | 07 November 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 51,51 |
| Parties | HILDRETH v. MASTORAS |
| Court | United States Supreme Court |
Messrs. George P. Dike, of Boston, Mass., and Frederic D. McKenney, of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.
Mr. Joseph L. Atkins, of Portland, Or., for respondent.
This is a certiorari to the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit bringing here for review a decree of that court, reversing one of the District Court of Oregon, granting an injunction against infringement of a patent for a candy-pulling machine. The patent, No. 831,501, was issued to Hildreth as assignee by mesne assignments of Dickinson. Mastoras, the defendant in the District Court, made and used a candy-pulling machine, under a later patent of Langer. The Circuit Court of Appeals held the claim of the Dickinson patent sued on to be so limited as not to cover the Langer device. (D. C.) 253 Fed. 68; Mastoras v. Hildreth %(c. c. a.)/ 263 Fed. 571.
The chief question in this case is infringement, and that turns on the question whether Dickinson's invention is held to be a primary or generic invention, or a narrow one limited solely to the device shown.
Not all candy is pulled, but much of it is. The process is first the mixture of the ingredients, then the boiling then the cooling on a slab, and then the pulling. After boiling and cooling, it is a compact mass of dark color. The pulling aerates it and makes it less in weight but larger in bulk, lighter in color and more capable of holding flavor. Until the beginning of this century, candy was pulled only by hand. It required much strength. Candy pullers were hard to get. The work was strenuous and produced perspiration and uncleanliness. It was done with the bare hands, and it was impossible to avoid danger from eczema and abrasions of the skin of the hands. It was neither appetizing nor sanitary. A good candy puller pull 300 pounds of candy a day. The capacity of the large machines now in use is 2 1/2 tons each, and one man can attend to two machines. Thus since 1900, the art has advanced from a production of 300 pounds a day to 10,000 pounds, with the same labor.
In April, 1900, Dickinson published an article in the trade journal, the Confectioner, describing a machine for pulling candy and offering it for sale. He advertised it quite largely. Hildreth ordered the Dickinson machine, tested it and rejected it as unsatisfactory. One of Hildreth's men, Thibodeau, having seen and worked on the Dickinson machine, made a machine which worked better. Hildreth filed an application for a patent for one device for pulling candy September 21, 1900. Thibodeau filed an application for another November 26, 1900, and an interference was declared between them. Thibodeau thereafter bought Dickinson's invention, and caused him to file an application for a patent November 5, 1901. Six applications were pending in the Patent Office at the same time, those of Dickinson, Hildreth, Jenner, Thibodeau, Robinson and Henry, and the Patent Office framed the issue between them in terms exactly those afterwards granted to Dickinson as the claim relied on in this case.
The controversy in the Patent Office lasted five years, was strenuously contested, and was carried to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The controversy involved, among other issues, that of the operativeness of Dickinson's device, as does the present case in one of its phases. He had given a public test of his machine at Grand Rapids where he lived, in 1900, and had invited a number of witnesses. They were called before the Examiner to testify whether the machine had worked successfully, and the Examiner found from the great weight of evidence that it had. Hildreth was a witness in the District Court below on this issue. He was in the embarrassing situation of having fought, in the Patent Office, Dickinson's claim, which he was now supporting as his property. He testified that while Dickinson's machine was not a success commercially, he had found that by shortening it and speeding it up, in accord with a suggestion of Dickinson, he could and did make satisfactory candy. The record shows that the Judge in the District Court below had a working model before him which he refers to as demonstrating that the device is operative.
Hildreth has been a candy manufacturer of Boston for many years, and since 1906 has made candy machines. In addition to his own patent, he has acquired by purchase all the other patents in interference with Dickinson. He acquired the Dickinson patent from Thibodeau before its issue, for $75,000.
By these new devices the art of candy making has been revolutionized. Some kinds of candy which if pulled at all had to be pulled when cold, could not be pulled by hand, because it required more than man strength; but they are now pulled by power machines. The production of candy has greatly increased, and 90 per cent. of all the pulled candy made is pulled by machine. Hildreth makes a half dozen different classes of machines which embody the devices of his own patent and others which he has purchased, but none of the model of Dickinson's. Mastoras, the respondent here, was for some time a licensee of Hildreth until he made and used his present machine.
In candy pulling by hand, the puller works the boiled candy, cooled but still warm and sticky, into a sausage-like piece two or three feet long, and weighing 20 or 25 punds, called a batch. He throws the middle of this over a hook fixed in the wall about the level of his chin. He pulls down the two ends, stretching the batch two or three times its length. Then he holds the ends together with one hand and with the other seizes the two strands about their middle and carries them over the hook, thus making a new bight of the folded or lapped strands over the hook, and shortening the lengths hanging from the hook, the ends of which are now brought together and pulled down again. This operation, repeated often, brings the candy into desired condition.
In the Dickinson machine, the candy is placed in the bottom of a trough, in the center of which is an upright pin, referred to in the patent as the 'candy puller.' There are two other pins suspended over the pin at one phase of the operation passing trough from the ends of an arm or plate, which in turn is fixed to a support and made to rotate. By suitable contrivance, the support which carries the pins is made to move back and forth from end to end of the trough. At each end of the trough, the pins are made by the rotary motion of the plate to which they are suspended, to reverse their positions from one side of the trough to the other before beginning their movement in the opposite direction. In this way there is produced an in-and-out movement of the suspended pins relative to the stationary pin every time they reach and depart from the ends of the trough. This movement causes the 'batch' of the candy in the trough, attached itself to the movable pins, to be pulled by lapping on itself as the suspended pins pass and repass the fixed pin and as their positions are reversed. The change of the relative position of the three pins is such that in a complete cycle of operation of the machine one of the pins passes through the space between the other two, and then another of the pins passes through a space between the other two, and then the third...
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