W F. Burns Co. v. Mills
| Decision Date | 02 January 1906 |
| Docket Number | 1,200. |
| Parties | W. F. BURNS CO. v. MILLS et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois.
The bill was to restrain infringement of letters patent No 725,858, issued April 21st, 1903, to the appellees for a new and useful improvement in savings banks.
The claim sued upon reads as follows:
'In a device of the class described, the combination with the receptacle having an orifice in one of the walls thereof of a rigid tube of circular cross-section extending inwardly from the orifice, and a circular row of integral teeth on the inner end of said tube, substantially as described.'
The following is a drawing of the device:
(Image Omitted)
The letters patent state however, that
Other patents cited are as follows:
No. 117,005, July 11, 1871, B. C. Smith; No. 214,341, April 15, 1879, C. T. Yerkes, Jr.; No. 232,257, Sept. 14, 1880, E. L. Gobisch; No. 269,673, Dec. 26, 1882, J. H. Hotchkiss; No. 465,649, Dec. 22, 1891, E. W. Roberts; No. 572,811, Dec. 8, 1896, F. E. Krauth.
Some of these patents relate to savings banks, and show means making the extraction of coins once deposited impossible. But the means thus shown do not embody, mechanically, the circular row of integral teeth employed in the patent in suit.
In the improvement of animal traps, however, the device utilized by Mills and Cunningham, in almost identical mechanical form, is shown-- the Smith patent No. 117,005, issued July 11th, 1871, being a good sample. A drawing of that patent is as follows:
(Image Omitted)
The tube used by appellant is almost identical with the tube used by the appellees, so that the patent being sustained, no question of infringement is left.
The decree of the Circuit Court appealed from sustained the patent, and ordered an injunction and accounting.
Dwight B. Cheever, for appellant.
L. L. Coburn, for appellees.
Before GROSSCUP, BAKER, and SEAMAN, Circuit Judges.
GROSSCUP Circuit Judge, having stated the facts, delivered the opinion.
The basic conception of the patent in suit is, that though a bill may be readily pushed through a tube having at its inner end a circular row of integral teeth,...
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