Opinion ID: 1550999
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Ignition Patents.

Text: On December 23, 1907, Dwight filed an application showing a machine to practice the basic process. This necessarily involved igniting the surface of the ore, and this was disclosed in various forms though none of them was claimed; the applicant at that time obviously supposing that they were not inventions. Figures 1 and 4 showed a pipe, which crossed the surface of the ore in advance of the air draft, and which had orifices through which the flame set fire to the surface. Figure 7 was for a brazier of coals, with a perforated screen within the suction area or pressure box. Figure 8 was for two opposed jets playing in a line across the ore, and figure 15 for a bottomless trunk or duct crossing the surface. All these were for direct ignition; the rest were for indirect. Originally, as we have said, Dwight claimed none of these, but on February 21, 1910, he added three claims, which read, however, only upon the indirect heating igniters, all that he meant to reserve in that application. At the same time he amended his application to say that he excluded figures 7, 14, and 15, because they had been divided out on February 4, 1910; that division finally resulting in patent 1,433,350. The three claims so introduced he canceled on September 22, 1910, with a reservation that he might put them into a divisional application filed later. Two divisions he did file in March, 1912, and some of the claims now in suit were the originals of those applications. A third application was later divided out of one of these two. Meanwhile the division of February 4, 1910, claimed the direct flame contact of the open duct, and an amendment to it of February 15th, the brazier. These features were continued till issue. When Dwight abandoned the three indirect igniting claims on September 22, 1910, his reservation of their subject-matter for later divisional application was no broader than the canceled claims themselves. These had, of course, not included flame contact, which had been already divided out on February 4, 1910. True, the pipe with orifices remained, but that was not claimed, and was anticipated anyway. When, therefore, in  March, 1912, he for the first time introduced flame contact into those applications, which resulted in patents 1,433,349 and 1,433,351, it was new matter which he was no longer entitled to claim, since Greenawalt had already more than 2 years earlier been using such a process to set fire to the ore. In Dwight & Lloyd's patents, 882,518 and 916,393, an igniter had been disclosed, operating by direct flame contact. These were pending at the time the original application was filed, and they were not copending applications of the same inventor. Dwight & Lloyd jointly were different inventors from Dwight alone, and the joint invention of both is a good anticipation to the later invention of either. Bannerman v. Sanford, 99 F. 294 (C. C. A. 2). Hence, under Milburn Co. v. Davis-Bournonville, 270 U. S. 390, 46 S. Ct. 324, 70 L. Ed. 651, the disclosures in the two joint patents just cited are valid anticipations of direct flame contact, taken broadly. For two reasons, therefore, claims 1 and 2 of 1,433,349 are invalid. Claim 3 of patent 1,433,349 includes as an element that the down draft shall draw the flame into intimate contact with the ore. This was interjected by changes in the drawings and specifications, which were an afterthought. Nothing of the sort appeared in the original specifications, but rather the contrary. These read as follows: The ore as it passes under the igniter L, will be ignited and immediately come under the influence of the air currents entering the suction box. This does not suggest any suction of the flame itself. Moreover, it is, if not theoretically, at least practically, impossible that, placed where they are, the flames will be sucked into the ore. While the pallets have no transverse ends, the air will follow the path of least resistance; it can scarcely move diagonally from the burner through the ore, when it has a direct path from above. At most the draft might divert the flame laterally away from the ore, which is just what the claim does not admit. Claim 7 of patent 1,433,351 apparently contemplates and provides against exactly this, though nothing in the specifications of the patent suggests the possibility, but rather that the flame will be drawn into the ore (page 2, lines 61-65), a passage copied from the specifications in patent 1,433,349. This element was, therefore, not only introduced into the claim too late, but it does not in fact exist in operation. We cannot resist the conclusion that it was added to cover Greenawalt's flame hood, which had meanwhile gone into extensive use. Claim 7 of patent 1,433,351 contains as an added element a flame of enough head not to be diverted by the draft. This element, taken alone, appears to us too insignificant to support a patent, when all the rest was old. The claims in suit of patent 1,433,352 are for an igniter within the hood; at least claims 1 and 5 are expressly so, and in the light of the specifications perhaps also claims 8 and 9. It is true that in the original application there was disclosed a brazier situated within the hood. This was not claimed originally, and, of course, the indirect ignition claims added on February 21, 1910, did not cover it; the brazier being already divided out. It is fairly plain that the only reason why the brazier was ever placed within the hood was that it was supposed that the draft was necessary to keep it active. At any rate, neither the three indirect ignition claims of February 21, 1910, nor any other claims before March, 1912, carried any intimation that Dwight regarded this feature as patentable, or meant to claim it. It was therefore too late on March 14, 1912, to introduce claims to a matter which had already been 2 years in the public demesne. Claims 1 and 5 are invalid, and, if claims 8 and 9 do not contain the element that the igniter shall be in the hood, they are equally bad, as the claims of 1,433,349. Patent 1,433,350 does not, however, fall within any of these objections; certainly not claims 8 and 9. As we have said, the open flaming trunk or duct was continuously claimed from February 4, 1910, and we can see no laches to affect their validity. Moreover, the defendant's hood appears to us to infringe these claims, because, while it is true that Dwight's disclosure was of an open chamber connected with a flue, the defendant's flame hood is still such a chamber, though it has no flue. Perhaps it is a better device, but it is nevertheless the device originally disclosed and claimed in season. Indeed, the four claims introduced on February 4, 1910, would themselves have been enough. In claim 10 as issued the phrase, through the material    during    the ignition, cannot mean that the down draft draws the flame through the material, because the specifications disclose nothing of the sort, and the drawings forbid the conclusion. The claim might perhaps mean that the draft passes through the material in an earlier pallet, while a later pallet is being ignited. We need not, however, decide how far that is possible, because the claims are invalid for another reason.  It is now settled law, in spite of any doubts that may have been cast upon it by certain observations in Chapman v. Wintroath, 252 U. S. 126, 40 S. Ct. 234, 64 L. Ed. 491, that a divisional application is no more than an amendment in the parent application, at least unless new matter be introduced in the specification, which, whatever latitude it gives, was not the case here. Webster v. Splitdorf, 264 U. S. 463, 44 S. Ct. 342, 68 L. Ed. 792; American Co. v. Prosperity Co., 295 F. 819 (C. C. A. 2); Westinghouse v. Jeffrey, 22 F.(2d) 277 (C. C. A. 2); Wagenhorst v. Hydraulic Co. (C. C. A. 6), 27 F.(2d) 27. Obviously this must be true, if the division is to take its date from the original, as it does; it could not be a proliferation of that original, unless the latter already adequately disclosed it. Until divided, the parent must therefore be understood to contain all those inventions, no matter how many are later divided out of it. At least, until then its fate is theirs; it carries them in its bosom. In the case at bar the original application was allowed on March 14, 1908, before any of the ignition patents in suit had been divided out. It was renewed on February 17, 1910, 13 days after patent 1,433,350 had on February 4th been divided out. The division was itself a renewal of the application, so far as concerns the inventions which it contained, and, as it was within 2 years after allowance, it was seasonable. The divided application was thereupon itself allowed on May 26, 1911, but was permitted to lapse, supposedly because of failure to pay the statutory fee. It was renewed on April 26, 1912, 11 months after the allowance of May 26, 1911, but over 4 years after the allowance of March 14, 1908. If the division is to be treated as a step in the one continuous application, then the case is directly within our ruling in Weston Electrical Co. v. Empire Electrical Co. (C. C. A.) 136 F. 599. There we held that the phrase in Revised Statutes, § 4897 (35 USCA § 38; Comp. St. § 9443), after the allowance of the original application, meant its first allowance, and that an applicant might not indefinitely withhold his patent in terrorem, by tacking successive periods of 2 years at his pleasure, meanwhile making such amendments as would keep it alive. Considering, as we do, the division as not a new application and not the original application, that rule applies equally to this situation. We can see no conceivable reason why a division should, as regards this matter, be treated in another way than any other amendment of which it is only an instance. We therefore think that the learned District Judge was right in dismissing the bill.