Otis Elevator Co. v. Geiger

• Decision Date: 30 March 1901
• Docket Number: 6,819.,No
• Citation: 107 F. 131
• Parties: OTIS ELEVATOR CO. v. GEIGER et al.
• Court: United States Circuit Court, District of Kentucky

107 F. 131

OTIS ELEVATOR CO. v. GEIGER et al.

No, 6,819.

United States Circuit Court, D. Kentucky.

March 30, 1901

Brown &amp Darby, for complainant.

A. E Willson and E. H. Hunter, for defendants.

EVANS District Judge.

The complainant, a corporation organized under the laws of New Jersey, in its bill charges that it is the owner, by mesne conveyances duly recorded, of certain letters patent which the defendants have infringed and will continue to infringe; and the usual prayer for an injunction and accounting of profits is contained in the bill. The defendant has filed an answer, the third paragraph of which is in this language:

'These defendants have no knowledge of the assignments alleged to have been made of the said letters patent, and therefore deny the same, and deny that any right or interest in the said letters patent has been acquired or is now possessed by the complainant; but, upon information and belief, these defendants aver that the complainant, the Otis Elevator Company, is a corporation or association created by the owners of several distinct patents relating to the construction and operation of elevators, for the sole purpose of restraining manufacture, controlling sales, and enhancing prices of elevators and apparatus used in connection therewith,-- the Otis Elevator Company not itself engaging in the manufacture and sale of such appliances, but being merely provided to hold the legal title to the said distinct and various letters patent while the original owners thereof are licensed thereunder,-- and that by reason thereof no title enforceable in a court of equity has been or is now vested in the complainant.'

The complainant has filed exceptions to this paragraph, and the interesting question thereby raised is to be determined.

Possibly the act of congress approved July 2, 1890 (26 Stat. 209), and commonly known as the 'Sherman Anti-Trust Law,' is the only statute upon which the courts of the United States ordinarily speaking, could adjudge such an agreement as the third paragraph of the answer describes to be void. Certainly I do not recall any other which would authorize the courts of the United States to declare a state corporation to be unlawful ab initio, as a prohibited combination. We may probably assume that prior to July 2, 1890, there was no law of the United States which provided that such combinations should be invalid. But the act of that date, by its terms, is made to operate only through the penalties which are therein prescribed, or through the direct proceedings which it authorizes the United States to institute to declare certain prohibited arrangements void, or by giving any person who is injured in his business the right to recover multiplied damages, though, in addition, while these statutory remedies, being the ways expressly prescribed for enforcing the act, are otherwise exclusive, it may be quite true that the policy of the United States, as manifested by this legislation, would authorize the courts of the United States, upon more general principles, to refuse to enforce, as between the parties thereto, such combinations as are denounced by this legislation. But, as a matter of pleading, it seems to the court that until the United States has acted it does not lie in the mouth of a mere infringer to urge any of these objections as matter of defense to a suit for infringement, and thus divert attention from his own wrongful acts by raising an independent and altogether collateral issue as to the manner in which the complainant acquired title to the patent alleged to have been infringed. If the paragraph showed that the United States, by a direct proceeding in its courts, had already caused the alleged agreement to be...