Case ID: f_179/html/0231-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

JOHNSON v. COLUMBIA COTTON OIL MILL MFG. CO., Limited.
    (Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
    May 16, 1910.)
    No. 2,045.
    Patents (§ 328) — Invention—-Process eor Extraction oe Cotton Seed Oil.
    The Johnson patent, No. 691,342, for a process for the extraction of oil from cotton seed'by using a mixture in stated proportions of cotton seed bran with the cotton seed meats, is void for lack of invention; it being shown that in the process previously used a mixture of hulls and meats occurred through the inability of the machinery used to wholly separate them.
    
      Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
    Suit in equity by Edwin Lehman Johnson against the Columbia Cotton Oil Mill Manufácturing Company, Limited. Decree for defendant, and complainant appeals.
    Affirmed.
    Lamar C. Quintero, Philip S. Gidiere, and Melville Church, for appellant.
    J. R. Beckwith and Max Dindelspeil, for appellee.
    Before PARDEE, McCORMICK, and SHELBY, Circuit Judges.
    
      
      For other cases see same topic & § number in Dec. & Am. Digs. 1907 to date, & Rep’r Indexes
    
   PER CURIAM.

This is a suit on a patent for a process. The-process claimed is the use in the extraction of oil from cotton seed of the mixture of cotton seed bran with the cotton seed meats in proportion of 2y2 per cent, to' 30 per cent. The proof shows that prior to the alleged invention a mixture of cotton seed hulls with the meats occurred in the process of preparing seed before compressing the oil, because the machinery used for preparing the seed for the press was inefficient to separate entirely the hulls from the meats, and the hulls in part went into the same mass with the meats.

It seems to make no difference whether the hulls go into the mass necessarily from the inability to prevent them or purposely by being placed there. We do not think there is such difference between cotton seed hulls and cotton seed bran as to make patentee’s process new or patentable. Both cotton seed hulls and cotton seed bran are from the outside covering or husk of the cotton seed. The claim that the “cotton seed bran” is the hull of the cotton seed with all the fiber removed is a distinction too fine to give validity to the patent.

The decree of the Circuit Court is affirmed.