Vanmanen v. Leonard
| Decision Date | 08 January 1918 |
| Docket Number | 3018. |
| Citation | 248 F. 939 |
| Parties | VANMANEN v. LEONARD et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
L. V Moulton, of Grand Rapids, Mich., for appellant.
Geo Leonard and Nicholas Bouma, both of Freeport, Mich., pro se.
Before WARRINGTON, KNAPPEN, and DENISON, Circuit Judges.
This is a suit for infringement of patent No. 988,677, issued to appellant William Vanmanen April 4, 1911, and relating to improvements in warehouse trucks. Upon the usual issues in such cases the patent was held valid, and claim 4 infringed though claims 1, 2, and 3 were held not infringed, and an interlocutory decree for injunction and accounting was entered accordingly. The master reported separately profits and damages on two sets of trucks, the first set comprising 322 and the second 50, but held that both sets infringed claim 4; the court affirmed the ruling touching the first set, but reversed it as to the second. The appeal concerns only the latter set of trucks; they are called 'modified' structures.
It is to be inferred, from testimony introduced before the master and from the master's report, that after the order of injunction was entered the defendants made a distinct change in the construction of their trucks, and that at the time of the accounting they had sold as many as fifty trucks of the modified form. This presents the question whether the modified structure infringes claim 4:
'In warehouse trucks, a metal top, sides integral with and bent down at right angles with the top, with the lower edges channeled to provide rigidity, end rails secured to the top and sides, and a supporting beam extending the length of the truck and secured to the end rails, in combination with necessary caster supports and stake sockets secured to the sides and end rails.'
The change involved in the modified structure concerns the 'supporting beam' called for in this claim. In the opinion allowing the injunction and accounting the trial judge described the device shown by the evidence and claimed in the patent as consisting of--
' * * * the elements of a sheet of metal bent to form the top and sides, end plates secured to the same and bent at the middle to form caster sockets, a center beam and means for securing the beam to the end plates.'
The infringing device which was then under consideration seems to have contained all these elements. The modified structure, however, omits the 'center beam'; and the present importance of this omission may be further seen in the specification, where, in speaking of the liability of a truck to warp, the patentee says:
'To avert this danger I place a heavy wooden beam or brace, as F, or a pair of cross-braces, as F', in position to engage both ends of the truck. I prefer the use of a single beam, as shown in Fig. 1, as it is much less expensive, more readily applied and equally as reliable as the cross-beams shown in Fig. 2.'
And the preference thus given to the single beam finds expression in claims 1, 2, and 3, as well as 4, of the patent. In place of the single beam, as also of the cross-braces, the defendants in their modified structure employ three beams located in the central portion of the truck frame, two disposed transversely to the truck with their ends fastened to the sides of the truck frame, and the other longitudinally thereto, with its ends fastened in turn to the transverse beams midway of their length, and also two iron rods, disposed one on each side of, and fastened in the same manner as, the longitudinal beam, but each equidistant between it and the corresponding side of the truck. Thus in the modified structure beams are fastened only to the sides, while in the patent the beam is connected only with the ends, of the truck frame, to strengthen the truck.
It is insisted that such a difference does not avoid the patent. It must be conceded that this would ordinarily be true; but in this instance the patentee materially limited the scope of his invention in the Patent Office. The application in its original form contained...
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...would seem to be applicable regardless of whether the Patent Office was right or wrong in rejecting the original claim. Vanmanen v. Leonard, 6 Cir., 248 F. 939. Under those rulings we think appellant is estopped to claim invention on a rubber or flexible matrix, unless by combination with o......
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