John W. Gottschalk Mfg. Co. v. Springfield Wire & T. Co., 3195.
| Decision Date | 01 June 1937 |
| Docket Number | No. 3195.,3195. |
| Citation | 90 F.2d 468 |
| Parties | JOHN W. GOTTSCHALK MFG. CO. et al. v. SPRINGFIELD WIRE & TINSEL CO. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
George P. Dike, of Boston, Mass. (Cedric W. Porter and Dike, Calver & Gray, all of Boston, Mass., on the brief), for appellants.
Franklin G. Neal, of Springfield, Mass. (J. L. Stackpole, of Boston, Mass., on the brief), for appellee.
Before BINGHAM, WILSON, and MORTON, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a decree of the Federal District Court for Massachusetts dismissing a petition for a supplemental injunction.
It appears that the petitioners, on December 14, 1932, brought a bill in equity charging the defendant, the Springfield Wire & Tinsel Company, with infringement of reissue letters patent No. 18,576 (reissued August 23, 1923, to Reginald F. Sedgley) for an improvement in the method of and apparatus for making coils; that in its answer the defendant questioned the validity and scope of the claims in issue by setting up certain prior art patents, and also alleged that the thing patented, if any of the claims are construed to cover the defendant's practice, "had been in public use and on sale in this country for more than two years prior to the application of said patent" by certain persons, naming them; that after a hearing in the District Court a final decree was entered dismissing the bill and an appeal was taken to the Circuit Court of Appeals; that the Court of Appeals, after reviewing the entire case, rendered an opinion, January 4, 1935, in which, out of the claims in issue, it sustained claims 19, 29, and 31 of the patent, construed claim 19 as being in substance the same as claims 29 and 31, found that the defendant had infringed the claims, vacated the decree of the District Court, and remanded the case for further proceedings, not inconsistent with its opinion; that on April 18, 1935, the District Court, in accordance with the mandate of the Court of Appeals, entered a final decree adjudging that claims 19, 29, and 31 were valid and infringed by the defendant "by making and using machines such as that described in the stipulation Plaintiff's Exhibit 1A and illustrated in the drawings and photographs attached thereto, to make into coils or curls wire which had been previously flattened by defendant on other machines," ordering that a perpetual injunction issue "enjoining and restraining said defendant, its officers, employees, servants, agents, attorneys, clerks and workmen, and every person acting for or on behalf of said defendant, from making, using or selling or aiding others to make, use or sell machines for making wire coils or curls, such as the machines described and illustrated in said stipulation Plaintiffs' Exhibit 1A, and/or any other substantially similar machine in infringement of said claims 19, 29 and 31 of said Letters Patent Reissue No. 18,576"; that, thereafter, on May 21, 1936, the plaintiffs in the original equity suit filed the petition here in question asking for a supplemental injunction in which they set out the terms of the final decree of April 18, 1935, and alleged that the injunction therein authorized had been personally served on the defendant; and that since the issuance of said decree and injunction, the defendant had continued to infringe claims 19, 29, and 31 "by making, using or selling a flyer type of machine described in * * * affidavits filed with the petition and illustrated in the drawings attached to said affidavits and marked `Plaintiffs' Exhibit A,'" and requested the court to issue an order requiring the defendant to appear and show cause why a supplementary injunction should not issue enjoining the defendant "from making, using or selling a flyer type of machine for making wire coils or curls, such as the machine described in said affidavits of Reginald F. Sedgley and Herbert S. Fairbanks and illustrated in the drawing, Plaintiffs' Exhibit A, attached thereto," and also directing the defendant to file counter affidavits; that, thereafter, the defendant filed an answer, supported by counter affidavits, wherein it admitted that the petitioners were the plaintiffs in the original cause, admitted the entry of the final decree, the issuance and service on the defendant of the petition, but denied that since the issuance of the final decree and injunction it had infringed claims 19, 29, and 31 or any of them, and averred (1) that the only flyer type of machine made or used by the defendant since the final decree and injunction was of the same construction and mode of operation as the flyer type of machine shown and described in United States letters patent No. 1,386,350 to Montgomery & Mason of August 2, 1921, and No. 1,403,181 to Mason dated January 10, 1922; and that prior to the application for original letters patent No. 1,777,900 to Sedgley, of which letters patent reissue No. 18,576 is a reissue, said flyer type was in public use for more than two years by the J. R. Montgomery Company at Windsor Locks, Conn., and by the defendant at West Springfield, Mass.; (2) that this flyer type of machine was exhibited in the original case as a prior public use by the Montgomery Company and the defendant, and that the decree of the District Court, that claims 19, 29, and 31 were good and valid, did not embody therein said flyer type of machine; (3) that since the issuance of said final decree new and noncumulative evidence not before known to the defendant or discoverable by it had come to its knowledge showing that claims 19, 29, and 31 were wholly void, and that the new evidence consisted in the allegations and admissions in paragraph 3 of the plaintiffs' petition that the said flyer type of machine infringed said claims 19, 29, and 31 and in the statements and admission, in the affidavits of Reginald F. Sedgley and Herbert S. Fairbanks, in support of said petition, that the eye of the flyer of such flyer type of machine forms a curling edge over which the flattened wire is drawn under tension to produce the helical coil; (4) that said claims were void and invalid because of the prior art patents Nos. 1,386,350 and 1,403,350 and the public use of the machines of those patents; and prayed that the petition be dismissed.
On September 30, 1936, after hearing on the petition for a supplementary injunction and the affidavits, the District Court entered a final decree to the effect "that the petition of the plaintiffs be and hereby is denied without...
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