Lanyon Zinc Co. v. Brown

• Decision Date: 28 March 1904
• Docket Number: 2,014.
• Citation: 129 F. 912
• Parties: LANYON ZINC CO. et al. v. BROWN et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

129 F. 912

LANYON ZINC CO. et al. v. BROWN et al.

No. 2,014.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

March 28, 1904

Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Kansas.

John H Atwood and John R. Bennett (C.E. Benton, on the brief), for appellants.

Douglas Dyrenforth, for appellees.

Before SANBORN and THAYER, Circuit Judges.

THAYER Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order awarding an injunction which restrained the appellants from using ore roasting furnaces made in accordance with the specification of letters patent No. 691,112, issued to Joseph P. Cappeau on January 14, 1902. This order of injunction appears to have been made on a motion which was filed in a proceeding that had been begun against the Lanyon Zinc Company and others to punish them for an alleged violation of an order of injunction previously obtained, which enjoined them from infringing claim 1 of letters patent No. 471,264, issued to Horace F. Brown, one of the appellees. In view of the manner in which the injunction was obtained, certain questions of procedure are discussed in the briefs. On the oral argument, however, it was agreed by counsel that all questions of procedure should be waived, and that the point to be determined on appeal was whether an ore roasting furnace made in conformity with the specification of the Cappeau patent, such as the appellant is now using infringes the first claim of the Brown patent, which is owned by the appellees.

The Brown patent has been before this court for construction on several occasions. Thus in Metallic Extraction Co. v Brown, 43 C.C.A. 568, 104 F. 345, the patent was upheld, and it was decided that an ore roasting furnace made in accordance with the specification of letters patent No. 532,013, issued to Alfred Ropp on January 1, 1895, infringed the first claim of the Brown patent; the same ruling was made in Lanyon Zinc Co. v. Brown et al., 53 C.C.A. 354, 115 F. 150; and the ruling was repeated in Lanyon Zinc Co. v. Brown, 56 C.C.A. 448, 119 F. 918. The first claim of the Brown patent, that has been upheld in the cases last cited, is as follows:

'In an ore roasting furnace having means for stirring and advancing the ore, a supplemental chamber at the side of the main roasting chamber, and cut off from said main chamber by a wall or partition, and carriers in said supplemental chambers connected with the stirrers, but removed from the direct action of the heat, fumes, and dust, substantially as herein described.'

Figures 1 and 2, which appear on the adjoining page, disclose the method of constructing the Cappeau furnace. Referring to these figures-- particularly figure 1-- it will be seen that the body of the furnace is supported by pillars or iron posts set firmly in the ground; the space underneath the hearth being left open and uninclosed to permit the free circulation of air from all sides. The floor of the hearth has a longitudinal slot through which a perpendicular arm or rod extends, which rod or arm, at its lower end, is attached to a carrier that moves on a track underneath the hearth. To the upper end of this rod a crossbar is attached, from which the rabble arms depend that serve to stir the ore within the furnace as the carrier moves along the track. At the ends of the furnace are swinging gates, which are opened by the stirrer mechanism, and are closed by their own weight as soon as the stirrers have passed.

The appellants contend that the Brown patent describes and claims a 'supplemental chamber cut off from the main chamber,' that a supplemental chamber is one of the essential features of the invention covered by that patent and that it is not...