Naceskid Service Chain Co. v. Perdue

• Decision Date: 07 October 1924
• Docket Number: No. 3998.,3998.
• Citation: 1 F.2d 924
• Parties: NACESKID SERVICE CHAIN CO. v. PERDUE et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

1 F.2d 924 (1924)

NACESKID SERVICE CHAIN CO. v. PERDUE et al.

No. 3998.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

October 7, 1924.

Thomas A. Connolly, of Washington, D. C. (Connolly Bros., of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for appellant.

Harry Frease, of Canton, Ohio, for appellees.

Before DENISON and DONAHUE, Circuit Judges, and COCHRAN, District Judge.

DENISON, Circuit Judge.

The appellant's infringement bill, based upon the Nace patent, No. 1,192,673, July 15, 1916, for an anti-skidding device, was dismissed by the District Court for the reason that the device did not disclose patentable invention.

The device consists essentially of a series of independent short chains, each adapted to encircle the wheel rim and tire of an automobile, and particularly the large tire of a truck. One end of the chain carries a ring; the other, a snap. These chains being passed around the tire and the ends snapped together, making a series of rings on the outside of the wheel, another chain is passed through these rings and its ends fastened together, forming a circle perhaps midway of the length of the spokes.

Claims 2 and 3 are sued upon. Appellant's counsel concede that, in order to be valid, claim 2 must have limitations implied which make it substantially equivalent to claim 3. The latter reads as follows:

"3. An anti-skidding device, comprising a series of independent chains encircling the rim of a wheel and a ring on the outer side of the wheel to which all of the chains are slidably connected."

The patent is not completely anticipated by earlier ones. No other patent shows the combination of the tire-encircling chains slidably connected with only one annular side chain; but the art does show independent tire-encircling chains separately attached to a ring carried upon the outside of the spokes near the hub, and also shows other forms of anti-skidding devices, in the shape of tire-encircling hoops or bands, held in position through slidable connection with a flexible annular member opposite the outside of the spokes. Even if the use of a slidable connection between the tire-encircling devices and an annular holding member were not thus disclosed in the same art, we could not see invention in its adoption by Nace. It might be otherwise if the adoption of the slidable, instead of a fixed, connection gave any peculiar utility; but it does not. The tire chains of Nace are not adapted to travel or creep around the tire as in the Weed chain (Perry v. Weed...