Putnam v. Keystone Bottle Stopper Co.

• Decision Date: 22 March 1889
• Citation: 38 F. 234
• Parties: PUTNAM et al. v. KEYSTONE BOTTLE STOPPER CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

38 F. 234

PUTNAM et al. v. KEYSTONE BOTTLE STOPPER CO. et al.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Pennsylvania.

March 22, 1889

A. V Briesen and W. Bakewell, for complainants.

William H. Doolittle, for defendants.

ACHESON J.

The bill of complaint charges the defendants with the infringement of two letters patent for improvements in bottle-stoppers,-- one granted to Karl Hutter, assignee of Charles De Quillfeldt, being reissue No. 7,722, dated June 5 1877, of original patent to De Quillfeldt, No. 158,406, dated January 5, 1875; and the other granted to William Von Hofe being patent No. 167,141, dated August 24, 1875. The title of the plaintiffs to the patents is not controverted.

1. The De Quillfeldt reissue, No. 7,722, has nine claims, but infringement of the first claim only is here alleged. That claim is as follows:

'The combination, substantially as before set forth, of the compound stopper, the yoke, the lever, and the supporting device on the bottle, by means of three pivotal connections, upon which the said members can be turned relatively to each other without disconnecting either one from the other.'

In two suits in the Second circuit, (Putnam v. Hollender, 6 Fed.Rep. 882, and Putnam v. Von Hofe, Id. 897,) the De Quillfeldt reissue, No. 7,722, was sustained by Judge BLATCHFORD, who also there held that the first claim of said reissue was infringed by a bottle-stopper from which the bottle-stopper made and sold by the defendants does not differ in any substantial particular. The like conclusions were reached by Judge McKENNAN in the case of Putnam v. Hammer and Sunderman, ^[1] a suit in this court on the De Quillfeldt reissue, wherein, after full argument, a preliminary injunction was allowed, and subsequently a final injunction was granted. Moreover, in this case against Hammer and Sunderman, in a proceeding for contempt for violating the injunction, Judge McKENNAN held that a bottle-stopper, in every material respect identical with the stopper which the defendants manufacture, infringed the first claim of the reissue now in suit. No such new proofs have been submitted in this case as would warrant a different conclusion, either upon the question of anticipation or the question of infringement, from that reached in the several cases referred to; and therefore, according to the prevailing rule in patent causes, in disposing of the present motion for a preliminary injunction those decisions should be accepted and followed. Manufacturing Co. v. Hickok, 20 F. 116. It is, however, strenuously urged that such effect ought not to be here given to those adjudications, because they were made before the decision touching reissues, in Miller v. Brass Co., 104 U.S. 350, and (as is supposed) without regard to the principles there enunciated; and the defendants insist that under the doctrine established by that decision the reissue in suit must be held to be void. But in Putnam v. Hollender, supra, Judge BLATCHFORD said:

'The answer sets up that the reissue covers more than was described in the specification of the original patent, and is not for the same invention. There is no evidence to this effect, and there does not appear to be any ground for the assertion.' 6 F. 888.

It appears, then, that the question of the enlargement of the scope of the patent was raised and considered in that case and the determination of the court was that the reissue was for the same invention as the original patent. ...