Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/107/649/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 20:31:25+00:00

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Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 107 › Slawson v. Grand Street R. Co.
1. It is the duty of the court to dismiss a suit brought to restrain the infringement of letters patent where the device or contrivance for which they were granted is not patentable, although such defense be not set up.
2. The invention described in reissued letters patent No. 4240, granted to Jolm B. Slawson, Jan. 24, 1871, is not patentable, as it is confined to putting in the ordinary fare box used on a streetcar an additional pane of glass opposite to that next the driver, so that the passenger can see the interior of the box. The letters are therefore void.
3. Letters patent No. 121,920, granted to Elijah C. Middleton, Dec. 12, 1871, are void. The fare box, the headlight of the car, and the reflector are the elements of the contrivance described in the specification and claim for lighting the interior of the box at night, and they are old. What is covered by the letters is not patentable, as it is simply making in the top of the box an aperture through which the rays of the headlamp are turned by means of a reflector.
This was a suit brought by John B. Slawson against the Grand Street, Prospect Park, and Flatbush Railroad Company to restrain the infringement of two patents, one granted to him as inventor and the other held and owned by him as an assignee.
The one first mentioned is a reissue, No. 4240, dated Jan. 24, 1871. The invention therein described is an improvement in fare boxes for receiving the fares of passengers in omnibuses and streetcars.
"By this means, disputes and contentions are prevented as to the sufficiency of the amount deposited to pay the fare or as to the genuineness of the money or tickets used for that purpose. It also enables the passenger, when he has unintentionally deposited more than the amount of his fare, to call the attention of the driver to that fact, so that he, should the passenger require the difference to be paid back to him, may report the case to the proprietor or his agent on reaching the end of the route, who will then pay the difference to the passenger, who, for this purpose, must ride to the office at the end of the route."
"A fare box having two compartments, into one of which the fare is first deposited and temporarily arrested, previously to its being deposited in the other, when the former is provided with openings, covered or protected by transparent media or devices, so arranged that the passengers can see through one and the driver or conductor through the other, in the manner substantially as and for the purposes set forth."
the interior of a fare box in street railway cars or other vehicles, when used during the night, and it consists in the construction of the fare box with suitable openings and reflectors, arranged and adapted to receive light from the ordinary headlamp placed above the fare box, instead of requiring a separate lamp to illuminate it as heretofore."
"Lighting the interior of a fare box at night by light obtained from the headlamp of the car thrown by a reflector I through an opening H in the headlamp box, into the chamber for the temporary detention of the fare for inspection, substantially in the manner and for the purpose set forth."
Upon final hearing, the circuit court dismissed the bill on the ground that the improvements described in the patents were void because they did not embody invention within the meaning of the patent laws. From this decree the complainant has appealed to this Court.
The appellant insists that the dismissal of a bill because the inventions described in the patents were not patentable, when no such defense was set up in the answer, is of doubtful propriety, and is a practice unfair to the complainants. The practice was sanctioned by this Court in the case of Dunbar v. Myers, 94 U. S. 187. In that case, the defense set up in the answer was want of utility in the patented invention, that the patentees were not the first inventors, &c. The circuit court rendered a decree for the complainant for a large sum. When the case came to this Court, the decree was reversed with directions to the court below to dismiss the bill on the ground, not set up in the answer, that the improvement described in the patent sued on did not embody or require invention and was not patentable, and the patent was therefore void.
"We think this patent was void on its face [because the improvement described therein was not patentable], and that the court might have stopped short at that instrument and, without looking beyond it into the answers and testimony sua sponte, if the objection was not taken by counsel, well have adjudged in favor of defendant."
We think the practice thus sanctioned is not unfair or unjust to complainants in suits brought on letters patent. If letters patent are void because the device or contrivance described therein is not patentable, it is the duty of the court to dismiss the cause on that ground whether the defense be made or not. It would ill become a court of equity to render money decrees in favor of a complainant for the infringement of a patent which the court could see was void on its face for want of invention. Every suitor in a cause founded on letters patent should therefore understand that the question whether his invention is patentable or not is always open to the consideration of the court, whether the point is raised by the answer or not.
involves invention, and that both the letters patent are therefore void.
A glance at the specification and claim of the patent granted to the complainant Slawson shows that the invention described therein consists simply in the placing, in the ordinary fare box used on streetcars and omnibuses, of a glass panel opposite to the glass panel next the driver, usually inserted in such boxes. The patent does not cover the fare box; it does not cover the insertion in the side of the fare box next the driver of a glass panel, nor a combination of these two elements. It consists merely in putting an additional pane of glass in the fare box opposite the side next the driver, so that the passengers can through it see the interior of the box. Such a contrivance does not embody or require invention. It requires no more invention than the placing of an additional pane of glass in a showcase for the display of goods, or the putting of an additional window in a room opposite one already there. It would occur to any mechanic engaged in constructing fare boxes that it might be advantageous to insert two glass panes, one next the driver and the other next the interior of the car. But this would not be invention within the meaning of the patent law. Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 11 How. 248; Phillips v. Page, 24 How. 164; Dunbar v. Myers, ubi supra. It is not a combination of the fare box having one glass panel with an additional glass panel, but is a mere duplication of the glass panel. Doubtless a fare box with two glass panels, arranged as described in the patent, is better than a fare box with only one. But it is not every improvement that embodies a patentable invention. This rule was fairly illustrated in the case of Stimpson v. Woodman, 10 Wall. 117, in which it was held that where a roller in a particular combination had been used before without particular designs on it, and a roller with designs on it had been used in another combination, it was not a patentable invention to place designs on the roller in the first combination, and that such a change, with the existing knowledge in the art, involved simply mechanical skill, which is not patentable.
process to a new subject, without any exercise of the inventive faculty and without the development of any idea which could be deemed new and original in the sense of the patent law, it was not patentable, and it was held that the application of a process for preserving meats and fruit, which had previously been used for preserving other perishable substances, was not patentable.
"The design of the patent laws is to reward those who make some substantial discovery or invention which adds to our knowledge and makes a step in advance in useful arts. It was never their object to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures."
And it was held that the placing of a screw for dredging at the stem of a screw propeller, when the dredging had been previously accomplished by turning the propeller stern foremost and dredging with the propelling screw, was not a patentable invention.
These authorities, and others that might be cited, are adverse to the appellant's case and clearly show that the contrivance covered by the patent issued to him does not embody a patentable invention.
was nothing patentable in the contrivance described in the second patent.

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