Maxim Mfg. Co. v. Imperial Mach. Co.
| Decision Date | 02 January 1923 |
| Docket Number | 3134. |
| Citation | 286 F. 79 |
| Parties | MAXIM MFG. CO. v. IMPERIAL MACH. CO. et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Chas Hills and Chas. Hills, Jr., both of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
Wallace R. Lane, of Chicago, Ill., for appellees.
Before BAKER, EVANS, and PAGE, Circuit Judges.
In a suit by plaintiffs appellees, herein called plaintiffs, the court held that claims 1, 2, 3, and 4 of patent No. 809,582 and claim 1 of patent No. 942,932, were valid and infringed by defendant appellant, herein called defendant. [1] The defenses are noninfringement, equitable estoppel, laches and invalidity. Eighty-seven patents are urged as representing anticipation in the prior art. Defendant also sets up a counterclaim, alleging unfair competition. The witnesses were before the court, and several potato-peeling tests, on behalf of defendant, were made in the presence of the court. After a careful examination of the evidence, we are of opinion that it amply supports the judgment of the court.
Out of the large number of anticipatory patents scheduled, a few are seriously urged. Remembering that all claims in issue are combination claims, it is at once apparent that the Dodge vegetable washer, No. 322,429, does not anticipate either Robinson patent. Admittedly it had no abrading surface. The slats on the bottom disk, shown in Fig. 2, are far different in kind, purpose, and operation from those described in the claims in issue. It does not appear that the Dodge machine was ever made or sold. The same things are true of the Lowe patents, German No. 84,102, and British No. 3040. They were for washing and not for peeling potatoes.
In the Jaeger patent, No. 524,420, the drawings and specifications show a cutting surface of blades, as distinguished from the rubbing surface in the Robinson patents. From its appearance in the drawings and the description in the specifications, it seems that, even if practical and efficient, the cost to construct would be prohibitive. It has never been upon the market nor made. Judging from the disk in the drawing, and the movement which it is said in the specifications is given to the potatoes, the agitation of the potatoes appears not to be given by humps or scoops, as in the Robinson device, but by the blades themselves. The surface of knives on the disk and sides of the container would have an effect upon potatoes similar to that of the stab metal or nutmeg grater surface in one of expert's reproductions of the Lehman machine operated in the presence of the trial court. They seem to have been unevenly and poorly peeled.
It is strongly urged that the Lehman patent, No. 91,238, clearly embraces all the features of the claims in suit. Defendant's expert McElroy had two machines made after what he said was the teaching of the Lehman patent, and with them peeled potatoes in the presence of the District Judge, who decided the case adversely to all of defendant's contentions there made. Those machines were before us at the argument. One has the stab metal face on the sides of the container, and on the face of the disk. In the other, the sides and disk are made of some abradant composition. Upon the face of the disk is a raised portion, extending from the outer edge of the disk, straight across to within about an inch of the center, and, as it lays upon the disk, presents a portion four inches long, with two beveled faces three-fourths of an inch wide. These are made to represent the elevation N in the patent.
In the expert's affidavit, the similarity between the Lehman and the Robinson machines is largely based upon the expert's alleged reproduction of the raised portion on the disk shown in the drawing in the Lehman patent, which is not otherwise described in the specifications than, 'This disk is provided with one or more elevations N.' After making the statement, viz., 'The structure of the 'elevation N' is very clear to me,' he also says, 'Although I am free to admit that there is room for a difference of opinion as to just what is shown. ' He then converts N into a perforated rectangular piece of metal, bent up substantially as above described. The expert never saw a Lehman machine. His knowledge of it was gained from the patent, which was before the trial court, and is before us. The drawing is very simple, yet so small, and so lacking in the presentation of those dimensions necessary to a clear understanding, that no one can do more than guess at what N was intended to be, and we are compelled, as the courts before us have done, to reject the interpretation which the expert himself has shadowed in doubt.
There is in evidence the Schaefer machine, that he testified was completed November 17, 1906, nearly two years after Robinson applied for patent No. 809,582, and, though he says he got the idea in 1903, no patent was applied for, and, although he had castings made for 800 machines, no person who purchased a machine from him and no user of such a machine was brought to testify. No use of the machine is shown. In 1911, Schaefer, in Chicago, interested other parties, and organized the Schaefer Manufacturing Company. The name was subsequently changed to the Sanitary Sectional Brush Company.
On the extreme edge of the Schaefer disk was a small hump. Schaefer says that one or more of such humps appeared on his disks, sometimes accidentally and sometimes by design. It was a machine with a flat disk, with one small hump on it, that he brought to the Schaefer Manufacturing Company; but the machine was almost immediately changed, so that it was wholly different in appearance, though the witness Smith said the mechanical action was practically the same. It is claimed that defendant is the successor of the Sectional Sanitary Brush Company, but the corporation papers show no connection. We find no similarity between the original Schaefer machine and plaintiffs' machine, except that Schaefer had the abradant surface, which defendant claims plaintiffs wrongfully took from Archer. If defendant's machine is a development of the Schaefer machine, the development has been away from the Schaefer form of disk and suspiciously strong towards that of the plaintiffs.
It is charged that plaintiffs abandoned the original Robinson striated disk surface, and took the Archer abradant, and only after that developed any sort of efficiency. There was a competitive test on government ship Hancock, which showed results very inferior to those of the Archer machine. Much stress is laid upon the time and outcome of that contest. When the test took place is left wholly uncertain. The only real light on the outcome of it is found in reported cases from which it appears that on June 9, 1905, Archer applied for two patents-- No 842,993, 'process for attaching an abrading surface to metal,' which was issued ...
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Dangler v. Imperial Mach. Co.
...as the Robinson patents), and to recover damages. A decree in their favor, entered in 1922, was affirmed by this court January 2, 1923. 286 F. 79. Thereafter the Maxim Manufacturing Company was duly adjudged a bankrupt, and the present proceedings were instituted to fasten upon appellants a......