Case ID: f_174/html/1020-04.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

FERNARD v. ONEIDA NATIONAL CHUCK CO.
    (Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
    November 9, 1909.)
    No. 82.
    Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York. This, cause comes here upon appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court, Northern District of New York, sustaining a demurrer and dismissing the bill. The suit was brought to restrain an alleged infringement of letters patent No. 747,874, granted to complainant December 22, 1903, for a thill coupling. The opinion of the Circuit Court is reported in 167 Fed. 559.
    George E. Ren-dell (Hugh C. Lord, of counsel), for appellant Richard ft. Martin, for ap-pellee.
    Before LACOMBE, COXE, and WARD, Circuit Judges.
   PER CURIAM.

Appellant criticises the opinion of the Circuit Court on the ground that it “took judicial notice” of the thill couplings of the prior art But it was not necessary to find any prior art other than such as the patent itself discloses. It is manifest from the patentee’s own statements that all he did was to bend over or clinch the eDds of the wire link, so as to prevent their slipping out of the apertures in which they were inserted. Of course, to do this he had to enlarge the interior of the aperture sufficiently to turn them. No amount of evidence, expert or other, could possibly raise such an obvious expedient to the dignity of an invention. The decree is affirmed, with costs.