Stockton v. Maddock

• Decision Date: 22 September 1881
• Citation: 10 F. 132
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey
• Parties: STOCKTON v. MADDOCK.

10 F. 132

STOCKTON v. MADDOCK.

United States Circuit Court, D. New Jersey.

September 22, 1881

James Buchanan, for complainant.

Edwin H. Brown, for defendant.

NIXON D.J.

This suit is for an alleged infringement of the first claim of certain letters patent, No. 155,814, granted to the complainant October 13, 1874, for 'improvement in water-closets.' Four defenses are set up in the answer Fist, that the complainant was not the original and first inventor of the invention claimed in the letters patent second, prior use of the alleged invention; third, want of utility; and, fourth, non-infringement. The first claim of the patent, which the defendant is charged with infringing is as follows:

'(1) In combination with the main-bowl, A, tangential receiving nozzle, B, and connecting opening, a, the spreader and showeret, C, formed in one with the bowl, and adapted to confine the water and project it circularly from the aperture, M, as and for the purposes herein specified.'

Both parties concede that the claim is for a combination; the expert of the complainant insisting that the combination has four members or constituents only, and the expert of the defendant testifying that it has five. This difference arises from the construction which they respectively give to the mechanism or device that fits into the interior of the bowl, adapted to receive and discharge the water from the aperture, and which the patentee calls, in the claim, 'the spreader and showeret, C.'

The complainant says that the terms 'spreader and showeret' refer to one and the same thing; and he does not regard the function of projecting the water radially inward through the hole, m, as essential or belonging to the first claim, but only to the second. The defendant, on the other hand, insists that the showeret is the hole, m, and is the fifth and indispensable element in the combination; that the inventor nowhere suggests a combination which does not involve the use of the showeret, and that there is no infringement because the showeret was not present in the water-closet bowls manufactured and sold by the defendants.

The question is thus presented whether a proper construction of the first claim necessarily includes the tube, m, as one of the elements of the combination therein described.

The determination of such a question is not without difficulty. There is much force in the suggestion of the learned counsel for the defendant that the specifications and drawings of the patent nowhere...