US Patent: RE1,312
|
| Wood bending machine
|
|
Patentee:
|
|
| John C. Morris (exact or similar names) - Cincinnati, OH |
| Manufacturer: |
| Not known to have been produced |
|
|
Patent Dates:
|
| Granted: |
May 27, 1862 |
| Reissue Information: |
| Reissue of 14,405 (Mar. 11, 1856) |
USPTO (New site tip)
Google Patents
Report data errors or omissions to steward
Jeff Joslin
|
|
Description: |
| This patent was heavily litigated. In Morris v. Theodore Royer, Samuel T. J. Coleman and John Young, Southern District of Ohio, March 1867, Morris sued the defendants for infringing this patent. The defendants argued that the reissue was fraudulent because it did added a claim not appearing in the original: the original patent provided only for fixed fulcrums for the levers used to bend the wood, whereas the reissue also claims the use of bending with straps connecting the ends of the levers and no use of fixed fulcrums. The judged ruled that a "construction of mode of operating a machine, described or distinctly referred to, but not claimed in an original patent, may be claimed in a reissue." He quoted this sentence from the original: "Another mode of using the handles (or levers) is to dispense with the fulcrum pins, so that in the operation of bending, while power is applied as before to the end of the handle, and the resistance is the unbent wood, the point of support is no longer fixed but shifting, being found in the bending strap, or point of contact of the strap and wood with the mold... and this... was the method originally used by me." The defendants also argued that Thomas Blanchard's patent 6,951 impeached the novelty of Morris' patent. After hearing expert testimony that consistently judged Morris' design to be nove, the judge again ruled in favor of Morris. The defendants, it turns out, were licensees of the assignees of the Blanchard patent. After comparing the models of the various machines, the judge ruled that the defendants machines "are altogether unlike the machines constructed under the Blanchard patent, and very nearly resemble the Morris machine. The other material variation in these structure, insisted upon by the defendant's counsel, is that in the machines used by them there is no provision for working them with a fixed fulcrum for the levers in the operation of bending, and that they have no such fixed fulcrum." Given the rejection of the defendant's previous arguments, the judge found that the defendant's machines did infringe, ordered a perpetual injunction, and referred the case to a master to ascertain damages. |
|
