Union Steam Pump Co. v. Manton-Gaulin Mfg. Co.
| Decision Date | 17 May 1921 |
| Docket Number | 807. |
| Citation | 272 F. 773 |
| Parties | UNION STEAM PUMP CO. v. MANTON-GAULIN MFG. CO. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Maine |
Woodman & Whitehouse, of Portland, Me., for plaintiff.
Fish Richardson & Neave, of Boston, Mass., for defendant.
This case is before me upon defendant's motion to dismiss the bill. The defendant is the owner of the patent to Gaulin, No 756,953, on a system for intimately mixing milk. In January 1918, the defendant brought suit against the plaintiff in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging infringement of this patent.
The case was tried before the District Court in Detroit, and it is claimed by the Union Steam Pump Company that the final decree there adjudicated and settled the rights between the parties, and concluded the controversy. But, soon after the decision in the Detroit case, the Manton-Gaulin Company instituted a suit against the Wright-Ziegler Company, of Boston, agents of the Union Steam Pump Company, claiming infringement of claim 7 of the same patent by the sale of a machine manufactured by the latter company, the machine in question being identically the structure, or one of the structures, passed upon in the Detroit case; and thereupon the plaintiff intervened in the Boston suit, as a party defendant, set up the final decree and record in the Detroit case, and contended that the Boston case was res adjudicata. The Boston suit was heard in the District Court. Judge Anderson dismissed the bill, saying:
'It ought not to be the law that a patentee can go into one court and complain of a device which infringes two of his claims, get a decree in one district, and then, a few months later, go against the same defendant and try out the other claims against the device which infringed at the time when the original suit was brought.'
The Boston case then went to the Court of Appeals. That court dismissed the bill in the Boston case on the ground that claim 7 was not infringed. It did not pass on the question of res adjudicata. The plaintiff in the suit at bar claims that the defendant's structure in the Boston suit was a structure manufactured by plaintiff in accordance with Exhibit W offered in the Detroit case, and contains the conical valve disposed to coact with the conical seat, as did the structure held to infringe claim 2 in the Detroit case that this structure was before the court in the Detroit case, and capable of being passed upon there in conjunction with claim 7, or with any other claim of the Gaulin patent; and that the whole action should be held to be res adjudicata. And the plaintiff says that, nevertheless, the Manton-Gaulin Manufacturing Company continues to threaten with infringement prospective purchasers of the machines like that passed upon in the Detroit case and the Boston case, and is causing the plaintiff great damage. And the plaintiff seeks an injunction against the defendant to restrain him from bringing further suits or ever making any further claims under this patent upon questions settled by the Detroit case. And the plaintiff further seeks to recover the...
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