Smith v. Hall

• Decision Date: 06 April 1936
• Docket Number: No. 251.,251.
• Citation: 83 F.2d 217
• Parties: SMITH v. HALL et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

83 F.2d 217 (1936)

SMITH v. HALL et al.^*

No. 251.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

April 6, 1936.

Arthur E. Paige and Frank E. Paige, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for appellants.

Albert L. Ely, of Akron, Ohio, Edmond M. Bartholow, of New Haven, Conn., and Geo. C. McConnaughey, of Cleveland, Ohio, for appellee.

Before MANTON, SWAN, and CHASE, Circuit Judges.

MANTON, Circuit Judge.

This suit is for infringement of claim 1¹ of patent No. 1,262,860, issued April 16, 1918, on an application filed October 26, 1916, for a method for the incubation of eggs. This claim was held valid and infringed in Smith v. Snow, 294 U.S. 1, 55 S.Ct. 279, 79 L.Ed. 721, and Waxham v. Smith, 294 U.S. 20, 55 S.Ct. 277, 79 L.Ed. 733. It embraces a method of hatching which makes it possible to increase the capacity of an incubator to many thousands by the combination of two major steps. Instead of setting the entire capacity of an egg chamber at one time, the inventor proposed to fill the chamber with successive settings, preferably three or four days apart, so that, when the chamber was filled, it contained eggs in different stages of incubation, some in the endothermic phase and some in the exothermic phase. Smith propelled a strong draft of properly heated air over the eggs thus set in staged incubation "with sufficient velocity to circulate, diffuse, and maintain the air throughout the chamber at substantially the same temperature." In this way, the heat-generating property of the further advanced eggs is offset by the heat-absorbing properties of the less-advanced eggs, so that there is a continuous tendency to equalize the temperature throughout the cabinet at approximately the temperature of the introduced current of air.

However, this record differs from those before the Supreme Court in Smith v. Snow and Waxham v. Smith, supra, for here appellants have offered evidence of prior public use of the patented method and knowledge thereof by Milo Hastings. He had been a poultryman for the Department of Agriculture in 1908 and 1909, traveling extensively and visiting poultry plants and experimental stations operating incubators. In 1909, the Dollar Hen, a book written by him, was published. Among other things, he described there an idea for the plan of construction and operation of a new type of hatcher. He said:

"The eggs are kept in bulk in special cases which are turned as a whole and may rest on either of four sides. At hatching time the eggs are spread out in trays in a special hatching room, which is only large enough to accommodate chicks in the amount of one-sixth of the incubator capacity, for twice a week deliverings or one-third if weekly deliveries are desired.

"There are no pipes or other sources of heat in the egg chambers. All temperature regulation is by means of air heated (or cooled as the case may be) outside of the egg rooms and forced in to the egg rooms by a motor driven cone fan, maintaining a steady current of air, the rate of movement of which may be varied at will. The air movement maintained will always be sufficiently brisk, however, to prevent an uneveness (sic) of temperature in different parts of the room."

This, it is said, was a disclosure of forced draft and staged incubation in the method of incubating and hatching eggs. It is argued that twice a week and weekly deliveries necessarily contemplate that the eggs in the eggroom would have to be of different ages and placed in staged incubation with the forced draft circulation maintaining an even temperature.

In 1910, Hastings built and operated an incubator of 6,000-egg capacity for one Davis of Brooklyn, N. Y., embodying these ideas. Drawings prepared for this trial under Hastings' supervision purport to illustrate this incubator, and original photographs with published illustrations and descriptions are in the record. Hastings, Davis, and his wife all testified that the apparatus and the method of hatching used in this incubator were such as indubitably to anticipate Smith. There can be no doubt that there was a closet chamber, in which the eggs were arranged in stacks of trays through which a current of heated air was blown by a mechanical fan. The questioned point is whether or not staged incubation was used and known there. Hastings specifically testified that it was. Davis and his wife both testified that eggs were put in the chambers as they came in, once or twice a week. We should be unwilling to accept this oral testimony if it were uncorroborated. See Barbed Wire Patent Case, 143 U.S. 275, 284, 12 S.Ct. 443, 450, 36 L.Ed. 154; Deering v. Winona Harvester Works, 155 U.S. 286, 301, 15 S.Ct. 118, 39 L.Ed. 153; General Motors Corporation v. Leer Auto Supply Co., 60 F.(2d) 902, 904 (C.C.A.2). But the necessary support is present here. An article in Poultry Culture, describing the later operations of Hastings at Muskogee, said: "* * * The moving air adds to or removes heat from the eggs with great rapidity. Because of this fact, eggs at all stages can be placed in the same trays of the Hastings Hatchery with little or no injury. Mr. Hastings hatched several thousand eggs under such conditions in his Brooklyn (Davis) plant last year." This was published before any motive for so declaring could be possible. Further indication that staged incubation was used at the Davis plant is taken from the Hastings' application for a patent, and the file wrapper relating to it. This application, No. 624,885, was filed May 3, 1911. It was designed to embody the invention practiced by Hastings at the Davis plant, and is witnessed by Mr. Davis and Isabel Carkhuff, the present Mrs. Davis. The drawing of the apparatus shows an undivided egg chamber down through which air is driven by a fan so that it circulates through a source of heat and then is drawn through the back of the fan and again started on its circuit. There are no separate chambers shown, and in his application Hastings makes no mention of any way of providing separate chambers with different temperatures. In view of Hastings' avowed intention of incubating large numbers of eggs at the same time and his substantiated declarations that he did have the incubator at Brooklyn operating with 2,000 eggs in it, he must have had eggs of varying stages of incubation there, since it is clear that the eggs were supplied in relatively small amounts. There is in the record documentary evidence specifically pointing out the fact that staged incubation was embraced in Hastings' idea. His original application was undirected by counsel. When he met with difficulties in putting the patent through, he employed attorneys whose brief on the appeal to the three Examiners in Chief contained the following:

"The...