Syracuse v. H. Daust Manufacturing Co.
| Decision Date | 06 July 1960 |
| Docket Number | No. 16369.,16369. |
| Citation | 280 F.2d 377 |
| Parties | Frances P. SYRACUSE, Appellant, v. H. DAUST MANUFACTURING CO., Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Lawrence C. Kingsland, St. Louis, Mo., for appellant.
Lawrence H. Cohn, St. Louis, Mo., for appellee.
Before GARDNER, WOODROUGH, and VOGEL, Circuit Judges.
From the beginning, women who take their babies places away from home have carried milk and change of swaddling clothes with them, using countless varieties of containers and carriers such as hand bags, satchels, grips, valises, and like devices.
In simplest form such devices have only one compartment but there is no claim that there is anything new in providing them with more compartments. Also in the simplest form, such a device has only one opening to the single compartment, but, especially with the advent of zippers, it has been easy and customary to add more openings to additional compartments.
On the 13th day of September, 1947, Frances P. Syracuse made application for patent for a device referred to as a "Utility Handbag Having Double Compartment with Individual Closures and Independently Accessible Bottle Pockets" to be used mainly to carry diapers, bottles, and other articles required for the care of an infant while travelling or away from home. Patent No. 2,533,850 was issued to applicant on December 12, 1950.
Thereafter she brought this suit for infringement of the patent and after trial on the issues joined, her action was dismissed. She appeals.
The description in her claim is of a handbag with four compartments of waterproof material reached by a vertically placed zipper opening at each end and two horizontally placed zipper openings at the top.
On inspecting a sample of the device and carefully considering the claim for patent, one can not help wondering how it could have passed to patent, and the wonder is not lessened by study of the file wrapper. See Hansen v. Safeway Stores, 9 Cir., 238 F.2d 336, at page 339. There is no element of the device that is novel. It is an ordinary handbag that has four zippered compartments of waterproof material instead of one, or two, or three, or five, or six, and as to which it is manifest that anyone with skill in making zippered handbags could equal or add to or subtract from the number of zippered compartments to any reasonable extent desired by a customer. As it is meant to carry articles that are sopping wet together with dry ones, the panelling of the compartments is of a waterproof material, such as ordinary skill suggests and requires. The applicant also stated that in addition to its usefulness to mothers of babies, the device is adapted for use as a beach bag for carrying towels, bathing suits, bottles of lotion, cosmetics, cigarettes, currency, and the like, as indeed any zippered handbag compartmented with waterproof material that could be made to order by anyone skilled in the ancient art of making handbags would be.
It appeared to the Trial Court and also to the Court of Appeals of the...
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