US Patent: RE17,139
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| Shears
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Patentees:
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| François Alexis Henri Deschâtres (exact or similar names) - Paris, France |
| Huber Gaston Raphael Vulliet (exact or similar names) - Paris, France |
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Patent Dates:
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| Applied: |
Oct. 25, 1927 |
| Granted: |
Nov. 20, 1928 |
| Reissue Information: |
| Reissue of 1,493,171 (May 06, 1924) |
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Jeff Joslin
"Vintage Machinery" entry for The Stanley Works
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Description: |
| The 1940 lawsuit, Stanley Works v. C. S. Mersick Co., tells us that the U.S. rights to this patent were owned by the Stanley Works. This patent number, along with patent numbers 1,765,317 and 1,796,812, was seen on a Stanley Unishear.Claim 15 of this patent was key in the above-mentioned lawsuit. "15. An automatic shears for cutting sheet metal, comprising a pair of fixed and movable overlapping, cutting blades having their cutting edges forming an acute angle, a carrier for the movable blade, means for giving to said carrier a reciprocatory movement of such small amplitude as to cause only a short intermediate part of the cutting edge of the movable blade to cross and recross the cutting edge of the fixed blade, and a rigid frame formed to provide a guideway embracing the carrier of the movable blade and a rigid support for the fixed blade and to provide guiding means with clearance space extending rearwardly and outwardly from the apex of the angle formed by the cutting edges of the blades to permit relative turning of the blades and the sheet metal during the operation of the movable blade."According to the lawsuit, this patent was licensed to the French firm of Achard et Cie, which manufactured this invention as the "Monobloc". Messrs. Heller and Steindorff (see, e.g., patent 1,775,787) established Unishear Co., Inc., to sell these shears, which they licensed (to sell, not to manufacture) from assignee Gueneau. They asked Gueneau to get a reissue of the patent to strengthen the claims. Co-inventor Deschâtres refused to sign the application which was then rejected for the lack of his signature; Deschâtres was then sued (in France) and forced to sign a new reissue application. Meanwhile, Unishear ran into quality and delivery issues with the imported Monobloc shears and began manufacturing a copy. Gueneau sued Unishear and, in the settlement, granted Unishear a license to manufacture; that settlement was signed a day before the second application for reissue was made.Still with us? It gets messier. Shortly before the settlement agreement was assigned and the section reissue application was made, Unishear introduced a handheld shear, the Mighty Midget, which did not infringe the original Vulliet-Deschâtres patent but did infringe claim 15 of the reissue. Then, in October 1929 Unishear sold out to The Stanley Works and assigned them the various Steindorff and Ungar patents as well as this Vulliet-Deschâtres patent and its reissue. Achard et Cie, the original patent licensee, signed off on this arrangement, and Gueneau did not dispute it. The lawsuit Stanley Works v. C. S. Mersick Co., then, was filed by Stanley Works when the defendant sold a sheet metal cutting tool made by Black & Decker that infringed the Vulliet-Deschâtres reissued patent. The court ultimately ruled the reissue to be invalid because the application for reissue was too long delayed. |
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