Mosler Safe Co v. Safe, ELY-NORRIS
| Decision Date | 17 January 1927 |
| Docket Number | No. 94,ELY-NORRIS,94 |
| Citation | 47 S.Ct. 314,71 L.Ed. 578,273 U.S. 132 |
| Parties | MOSLER SAFE CO. v. SAFE Co |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Samuel Owen Edmonds, of New York City, for petitioner.
Messrs. Lawrence Bristol, Julius M. Mayer, and F. P. Warfield, all of New York City, for respondent.
This is a bill in equity brought by a corporation of New Jersey against a corporation of New York alleging unfair competition. It was treated below as a suit by the only manufacturer of safes containing an explosion chamber for protection against burglars. It seeks an injunction against selling safes with a metal band around the door in the place where the plaintiff put the chamber, or falsely representing that the defendant's safes contain an explosion chamber. The plaintiff admitted that the defendant's safes bore the defendant's name and address and that the defendant never gave any customer reason to believe that its safes were of the plaintiff's make. The District Court, following American Washboard Co. v. Saginaw Manufacturing Co. (C. C. A.) 103 F. 281, 50 L. R. A. 609, held that representations such as were sought to be enjoined did not give a private cause of action. The Circuit Court of Appeals held that if, as it took it to be alleged, the plaintiff had the monopoly of explosion chambers and the defendant falsely represented that its safes had such chambers, the plaintiff had a good case, and that since the decision above cited the law had grown more liberal in granting relief. It therefore reversed the decree below. 7 F. (2d) 603. In view of the conflict between the Circuit Courts of Appeals a writ of certiorari was granted by this Court. 268 U. S. 684, 45 S. Ct. 515, 69 L. Ed. 1156.
At the hearing below all attention seems to have been concentrated on the question passed upon and the forcibly stated reasons that induced this Court of Appeals to differ from that for the Sixth Circuit. But, upon a closer scrutiny of the bill than seems to have been invited before, it does not present that broad and interesting issue. The bill alleges that the plaintiff has a patent for an explosion chamber 'as described and claimed in said letters patent'; that it has the exclusive right to make and sell 'safes containing such an explosion chamber'; that no other safes containing 'such an explosion chamber' could be got in the United States before the defendant, as it is alleged, infringed the plaintiff's patent,...
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