United States v. Frazer
| Citation | 22 F. 106 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES v. FRAZER. |
| Decision Date | 20 October 1884 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
E. A West and R. S. Tuthill, for complainant.
Coburn & Thacher, for defendant.
This is a demurrer to a bill filed to cancel two patents, the first dated September 9, 1879, and the second dated October 19 1880, both being issued to defendant for 'improvements in axle-grease.' The right to cancel these patents is claimed on the ground that the defendant, in order to obtain them, falsely and fraudulently made oath that the alleged improvements had not been before known or used, when, in fact, they had been publicly known and used more than two years prior to the application made therefor; and that the process described in the patents was fully described in a patent issued to the defendant himself in October, 1860 which has long since expired. The bill avers that the defendant Frazer, in 1863, commenced, in the city of Chicago, the manufacture of axle-grease under what he pretended was the process covered by his patent of 1860; and after conducting the said business for some time, he sold it out to several persons, named in the bill, and they, after conducting the business for some time as his successors, formed a corporation which has, since that time, conducted the same business; that since he sold his business the defendant has obtained the patents now in question and again resumed business, claiming that these two patents cover the device and process which such corporation is now using and which defendant so sold to said persons. This allegation, taken together with a letter from the attorney general of the United States which was filed with the bill, and appears as part of the record, shows, in substance, that this bill was prepared here by a firm of well-known attorneys, who make patent cases their specialty, and submitted to the attorney general, who transmitted it to the district attorney here, with directions to file it upon sufficient bond being filed to indemnify the United States against all costs and expenses on account of this proceeding.
The averments in the bill, with the letter from the attorney general, show that the persons or corporation who claim to be aggrieved by the conduct of the defendant after he had sold them the exclusive right to manufacture this composition have obtained the use of the name of the United States for the purpose of conducting a suit of their own in regard to the validity of this patent. The facts set out in the bill concerning the device described in the two patents of 1879 and 1880, if true, are sufficient to defeat this patent. They are such as are set up in very many if not almost all patent controversies where the question of the novelty and validity of the patent is challenged, and such as almost every patentee is called on in some form to meet. It is true that it is an imposition on the patent-office to falsely make an affidavit that a device for which a patent is asked has not been known and used prior to the invention thereof by the applicant for the patent. Such...
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United States v. American Bell Tel. Co.
...21 F. 318; Same v. Same, post, 624; Asbestos Co. v. Salamander Co., 13 Blatchf. 453; Celluloid Co. v. Vulcanite Co., Id. 375; U.S. v. Frazer, 22 F. 106; Town of Mt. v. Gillman, 9 Biss. 479, 14 F. 123. It can be inferred from the bill that these patents have been universally sustained. U.S. ......
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United States v. Glaxo Group Limited
...a fraud practiced on the United States — that is, that the United States was the party in interest — was emphasized shortly thereafter in the Frazer case71 when a district court in Illinois dismissed a suit for cancellation based on a notorious fraud because private parties had put up the r......