648
FEDERAL REPORTER.
not intended or calculated to bring a dollar to the hands of the assignee. It is not clear that if successful it will indirectly benefit the bankrupt's estate, even by relieving it of general liability. It is not clear that the assignee could maintain the suit, nor that if he could it would in anywise be to his interest to bring it. See Dud ley v. Eastern, 104 U. S. 99. The complainants have an interest adverse to the assignee in so far as they claim mortgage rights; for, while it appears that the amount of their claims against the bankrupt are fully admitted on the schedules, it does not appear that their mortgage rights are admitted. If not admitted, a suit to enforce them would be adverse to the assignee's interest. The view I take of this case is that it is a bill to foreclose a mortgage; a bill to foreclose notwithstanding a fraudulent transfer of the mortgaged property; a bill to foreclose notwithstanding the bankruptcy of the mortgaged debtor. It seems clear to me that the demurrers should be overruled, and the defendants required to answer. And such judgment will be entered.
MORGAN ELEVATED
By. Co. v.
PULLMAN.
(Oircuit Oourt, N. D. nlinois. December 4, 1882.) PATENTS FOR INVENTIONS-ELEVATED HAlLWAYS. ..
A patent for a plan and design for the construction of an elevated street railway, to be composed of a series of arches, supported on each side of the street upon iron shoes imbedded in and connected together by arched trusses and tension-rods, to impart sufficient strength and rigidity to preven t any vertical or lateral displacement of the railway,-the essential element of the invention being the arcs or arches, supported and strengthened in the m·mner stated, - held, not infringed by any elevated railway, constructed without these essential features.
Hamilton Spencer, Henry A. Gardner, and A. T. Ewing, for complainant. Judge Green, Robert Williams, and Wirt Dexter, for defendant. DRUMMOND, C. J. On the twentieth of April, 1869, letters patent were granted to Richard P. Morgan, Jr., for an improved elevated railway. The bill alleges that the defendant, without the consent of the plaintiff, and since the letters patent were issued to Morgan, has constructed, in the city of New York, an elevated railway upon the plan and design secured to Morgan by the said letters patent, and
MORGAN ELEVATED RY. 00. V. PULLMAN.
649
in violation of the rights of the plaintiff. The bill also alleges · the plaintiff has become, by proper deeds of assignment, the owner of all the rights of Morgan under ,the patent. The defendant, in his answer, admits that he is a stockholder and director of the Metropolitan Elevated Railway Company of the city of New York; but he denies, among other things, that the Metropolitan Railway Company was built upon the plan or design alleged to· have been secured by the letters patent to Morgan. Waiving all questions connected with the validity of the letters pat· ent granted to Morgan, I propose to consider only this question,·viz., whether the Metropolitan Elevated Railway in New York is an infringement of that descdbed by Morgan in his letters patent, because if that question is decided against the plaintiff then we need not cpnsider or decide other questions which have been made in the case, . It becomes necessary, therefore, in this view of the case, to ascertain the nature and character of the elevated railway by Mor- . gan in his letters patent, as well as the nature and the construction of the Metropolitan Railway of New York·. A.s inary to this, however, certain facts and principles should be stated which do not seem to admit of any serious controversy: (1) Morgan was not the first inventor of an elevated railway for the rapid transit of passengers in large cities. The proof shows that other persoHs preceded him in this field of discovery. (2) Morgan could not be the inventor and so entitled to a patent of an elevated railway in large cities as such, but only to the particular means or instrumentalities by which a railway was constructed. Morgan, in his specifications, declares that bis invention consIsts "in the construction of a street railway, composed of a series of arches, supported on each side of the street upon iron shoes imbedded in masonry. These arches are connected together by trusses of an ordinary or suitable construction, which will impart sufficient strength and rigidity to the whole superstructure to prevent any vertical or lateral displacement of the railway." He then proceeds to give a description in detail, accompanied by drawings, of the particular manner in which his elevated railway is constructed. Posts are imbedded in masonry on each side of the street. These, rising from the place where they are imbedded, form an arch immediately over the center of the street. There is an interior arc or arch attached to the posts already named, extending across the street in an elliptical, semi-circular, or other curve below the principal arch. These two arcs are connected together by trusses and tension and stay-rods, in the man-
650 ner particularly desqribed in the specifications and in the drawings, an indispensable part of which would seem to be a .tension rod of great · strength extending from the a,pex of the upper arch to the lower aroh. In the opening between these two arches, left by the trusses and the tension rods, as described in the specifications, is a sufficient space for the cars to run without obstruction. The material of which these posts, arched trusses, and tension rods are constructed is assumed to he iron, wrought iron, or angle-iron. A Eoeries of arches heing thus constructed at suitable distances from each other, and connected together by longitudinal stringers of sufficient solidity and strength, with propedrusses,constitute the elevated railway described by Morgan in his letters patent. He makes five claims, as follows: "(1) The elevat.ed railway constructed and arranged in the manner and for the purpose herein described'. (2) Tbe arches, a andb, so constructed as to act as a support to each other in sustaining the superstructure and trains in a street railway in the manner and, for the purpose herein described. (3) The combination of th(l arcs or a and b, with the truss fr;,mes, c and d, in the manner and for the purpOS(l herein described. (4) The connection of the arcs or arches, a and b, of all elevated street railway by means of truss frames, in the manner and for the'purposeherein described. (5) The combination of the arcs or arches, a and b, with the tension rods herein described, 80 as to resist the vertical and lateral pressure upon the whole superstructure, and by a conflict resolution of forces, to direct the same in the line of the strength of. the material (lmployed, thus enabling a light and economical structure to be used, and biterfering in the smallest possible degree with the space, light, and ventilation of the streetll occupied and the bUildings thereon."
There be no doubt that in the speaifications and drawings, an essential of the invention described by Morgan, and which in all of th(l five claillls made by him, is the arcs or is arches supporte(l and strengthened in the manner stated by him; and that any railway; !JQnstructed without these essential features containe.d. in the elevated railway of Morgan, does not infringe the pateI;lt.'Wehave the t,estimony, of ,several witnesses who detheM,'etropolitan Elevated Railway is scribe the manner iD, constructed,a.nu we have also in evidence several photographs which pQipts of the railway itself, so that give a distinct v:iew'from we are enablEJd tofoJ::!1l a very clear idea of the manner in which it bas been There are p'osts or shafts fastened, in the ground, t.he curl:!stone, rising .to liLproper elevation, acrOss which are placed,' wr<;mght-iron beaIlls; which from one side of the dreet to the other, strengthened by a short circular flange at the end
HORGAN
RY, dO. V. PULLMAN.
651
of each beam, and attached to the post. These beams are formed by the union of wrought-iron plates stayed 'by angle-irons and by means of rivets, and have the appearance of being solid, They are three or four feet deep vertiually, A series of these are constructed and are connected together by stringers of proper strength, and with trusses, and upon these the rails are laid upon which the cars run; there being, in fact, nothing above the rails. There really seems to be no similarity in the construction of these shafts and beams, as thus described, to the arches of the plaintiff's patent; unless, possibly, in the fact that there springs from the top of each post, or shaft, a sort of flange in a circular form, not essentially different from an ordinary. bracket, which is attached at a short distance from the shaft to the beam, Indeed, these beams would be described as girders, and not at all as arches; and from a 'mere inspection of the construction of the two eleva-ted railways, that of the Morgan and the Metropolitan EleTated Railway of New York, the contrast is apparent. It is not necessary to consider what might be the effect of the construction of such an elevated railway as that described by 'Morgan in the streets of New York, with the short curves at rightangles there made; it is sufficient to say that the difference between the two railways, though both are of iron, is so clear and distinct ,that they cannot be said to be a pattern or an imitation one of the other. ' There does not seem to be anything particularly novel in the con· struction of either railway, in connecting longitudInally the various parts together. They are not, in either case, essentially different from the manner in which bridge stringers had been stretched before, from pier to pier. In comparing two structures ofthia kind, we have to be guided very much, eveb. after examining the details of both, by the manner in which they strike the eye; and thus judging of them I am clear, independent of what has already been said upon other grounds, that the structure called the Metropolitan Elevated Railway of New York is not an infringement of the elevated railway covered by the patent of Morgan, and so the bill will be dismissed.
FEDERAL
BEPORTIB.
FAY
V. PREBLE, Adm'x.
(Oircuit Oourt. N. D. Illinois. December 4, 1882,) PATENT FOR INVENTION-ExpANDED CLAU!S IN REISSUE.
Where the true and only allowable const,ruction of complainant's patent for an improvement in planing machines requires that the pressure rollers sh'all be used in combination with independent sw illgillg arms, as described in the specifications, he cannot by a reissue be permitted to expand the claims so as tl) cover all divided or broken pressme rollers; and where defendant does not use thl' SWinging arms, nor complainant's combination of those arms, with his pressure rollers, there is no infringement.
Parkinson <t,Parkinson, for complainant. Geo. P. Barton, for defendant. BLODGETT. D. J. This is.a bill for an injunction and account h; reason of the alleged infringement of a patent issued by the Unite(' States to James. Goodrich and Henry J. Colburn, bearing date Feb, ruary 7,)871, and numbered a.nd reissued on the first 0' October, 1878, to the said Goodrich and Colburn, assignors of W. H Doane, the reissue being No. 8,438, for "an improvement in planin)., machines. ", . The defense relied on is (1) that the reissued paten! is void, for the reason that iUs for a differen.t invention than that covered by the, original patent; and (2) that the defendant does not infringe. The feature of the original patent brought in question by this suit is a device by which the lumber to be planed is held or pressed down to t4e traveling bed of the planing machine by means of two or more pressure rollers placed in a line across the bed of the machine so that united length I3hall reach across the bed. ' The original device, as, patented b.y Goodrich and Colburn, contained several features seemed to think of much more merit than the ,which the special feature .in in this suit, and those elements or features formed the &ubjeet of thetiret, three claimS of t:he patent. There is no.proof in the. record :that, machine embodying all the distinctive features of the original patent was ever made and operated for planing lumber, and the opinions of several witnesses of much experience in the working of this class of machinery are given in proof to the effect that a useful planing machine could not be made by following the specifications and drawings shown in the patent. It also appears from the proof that in the year of 1877 the complainant company and another manufacturer of plan.