aptly and forcibly said, in Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U. S. 200, 2 Sup. Ct. 225:

"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 the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of those laws 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. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct, than to stimulate, invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers, who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith.”

The complainant concedes that, prior to his patent, he had seen glass cases, globular in form, used for containing and displaying artificial flowers and wreaths on graves in cemeteries. It was a mere matter of economy and durability to make the three sides of tin. And as like fashioned cases, in grocer boxes with glass faces, removable in slots or grooves, were in common use, as also in street lamps, there certainly was no originality of conception in applying the method to cases containing wreaths, flowers, etc., for use on graves. Neither was there any novelty in sliding the glass in slots or grooves, so as to secure the glass at the top and on the sides, with the lower side or bottom open to allow the removal of the glass. This was already manifest in the street lamp. Neither' was there any originality of conception in employing the side grooves as a duct to carry the water off. This performed the simple and well-known office of a gutter conduit. To construct this conduit in a tubular form, with bearing flange, or in the form of a semicircle, so that the lower rim thereof should support the glass, while the concave of the gutter should catch any water that might pass between the outer edge of the glass and the tube, and conduct and discharge it at the lower end, were such simple functions, merely structural in character, as would ordinarily suggest themselves to the mind of any thinking, skilled mechanic. Was there any patentable novelty in employing the flexible clips at the bottom of the case to prevent the glass from sliding out when the case was set at the required angle? The necessity of some such support was obvious. Any simple device within the grasp of an ordinary mechanic would subserve the same purpose. To the tinner commissioned to construct such case for the use designed, the placing of a clip made of tin, easily bent back and forth, or any like pliable metal, would have been as natural as it was simple.

The only remaining claim in this patent is that of the legs or stays. Such supporting feet were visible in the easel, or house stepladder, and other like structures. "It is not invention to improve a known structure by substituting an equivalent for either of its parts." Walk. Pat. § 36. To make these legs or stays out of wire, inserted in tin ears, so as to work pivotally, instead of being made of any other metal, or hung with hinges, or to move up and down on a stationary rod, or other like known method, so as to make the legs capa

ble of extension and contraction, and to be folded up, is not seriously claimed, we take it, to possess the merit of a patentable novelty. We may aptly apply to the last two claims the language of Mr. Justice Clifford, in Machine Co. v. Murphy, 97 U. S. 125:

"Except where form is of the essence of the invention, it has but little weight in the decision of such an issue; the correct rule being that, in determining the question of infringement, the court or jury, as the case may be, are not to judge about similarities or differences by the names of things, but are to look at the machines or their several devices or elements in the light of what they do, or what office or function they perform, and how they perform it, and to find that one thing is substantially the same as another, if it performs substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain the same result, always bearing in mind that devices in a patented machine are different, in the sense of the patent law, when they perform different functions or in a different way, or produce substantially a different result."

That other mechanics and tinners should have testified to making the equivalent of such case prior to the grant of this patent, unaided save by their observation that the box was used by grocers and on street lamps, should arouse little incredulity. Our conclusion is that the patent in question is void for want of patentable novelty. The decree of the circuit court is therefore reversed, and the cause Is remanded, with directions to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the bill, at the cost of complainants.

FRASER et al. v. GATES IRON WORKS.

(Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. March 3, 1898.)

1. PATENTS-ANTICIPATION.

No. 407.

A patent for a gyrating crusher shaft in a stone crusher having a tapering journal bearing may be anticipated by any similar bearing, whether found in a stone crusher or not, as journal bearings, wherever found, are within the scope of the art to which the patent pertains.

2. SAME-INVENTION.

A tapering shaft and cylindrical bearing being old in stone crushers, the desirability and practicability of producing a continuous line of contact in the bearing is obvious, and involves no invention.

& SAME.

In a gyrating crusher shaft for a stone crusher, having a tapering journal moving in a cylindrical bearing, the making of the exact adjustment in the angle of gyration necessary to produce a single line of contact between the Journal and the bearing requires mere mechanical skill.

SAME-STONE CRUSHERS.

The Gates patent, No. 259,681, for a gyrating crusher shaft for a stone crusher, having a tapering journal in combination with a journal bearing, is void because of anticipation and for want of invention.

Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern Division of the Northern District of Illinois.

This appeal presents a question of the validity of the first claim of letters patent of the United States numbered 259,681, granted June 20, 1882, to Philetus W. Gates. The claim reads as follows:

"A gyrating crusher shaft having the tapering journal, c, in combination with a journal bearing, whereby only a portion of said tapering journal stands parallel and in contact with the vertical surface of said bearing during the gyration of the shaft, substantially as described."

The specification contains the following statements:

"My invention relates specially to a shaft having a conical crusher head between its ends, and which has its lower end connected to a revolving eccentric, which gives the shaft and conical crusher head a revolving gyrating movement, while its upper end is fitted to move in a stationary journal bearing; and the object of my invention is to secure a continuous straight bearing during the action of the crusher head from the bottom to the top of the journal bearing along the working surface of the journal of the shaft, while the requisite accommodation for the gyratory movement of the shaft is afforded, and this object I attain by means hereinafter described, represented in the accompanying drawings, and claimed. * * Any other form, combination, and arrangement

of these well-known parts may be adopted in connection with my invention so long as the same produce a revolving gyratory motion of the conical crusher head."

The prior art in proof consists in part of letters patent of the United States, No. 9,914, to Dibben and Bollman, for multiplying gearing; No. 28,031, to G. H. Wood, for stone-crushing mill; No. 44,000, to Friedrich Klinkerman, for grinding mill; No. 56,793, to Henry Pearce, for quartz crusher; No. 63,675, to Thomas Varney, for quartz mill; No. 79,168, to Seth Wheeler, for universal joint; reissue No. 3,633, to James W. Rutter, for ore mill; No. 190,048, to Reuben T. Jennings, Sr., for mill bush; No. 201,643, to Charles N. Brown, for ore crusher and grinder. Chief reliance is placed by the appellant on the devices of Wood, Pearce, Rutter, Brown, and Jennings, of which the following illustrations have been furnished:

No question is made of the correctness of these drawings excepting those of the Wood and Pearce devices, in respect to which the brief for the appellant says:

"It will be understood that Wood and Pearce do not show details of their fixed or lower bearings. Wood describes his so that it can be reproduced in the two forms shown. Pearce does not describe his, but shows enough to enable a mechanic to make it; and as he says that the lower flange of his cone may be omitted so as to simply crush the ore without pulverizing it, his machine requires a resistance against lateral pressure, and a strength nearly, if not quite, equal to the Gates. For these reasons the substantial accuracy of the cuts cannot be seriously questioned."

For a general description of stone crushers and explanation of their modes of operation, and for an exposition of the art as it existed before the date of the patent in suit, reference is made to the opinion of the supreme court in Iron Works v. Fraser, 153 U. S. 332, 14 Sup. Ct. 883. For the opinion of the circuit court in this case, see 79 Fed. 75. The claim now in question was held to be without invention by the United States circuit court of appeals for the Fifth circuit in Birmingham Cement & Mfg. Co. v. Gates Iron Works, 41 U. S. App. 201, 24 C. C. A. 132, and 78 Fed. 350, referred to in the opinion below.

L. L. Bond, for appellants.

Edmund Wetmore and H. Gordon Strong, for appellee.

Before WOODS and JENKINS, Circuit Judges, and BUNN, District Judge.

WOODS, Circuit Judge, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.

The opinion delivered below contains no recognition of a prior art in either straight or tapered journal bearings, but, proceeding entirely on the assumption or theory that "the structure which was in the art, and which that indicated in the patent was intended to supersede, was a ball and socket," is devoted to an explanation on geometrical principles of the differences in construction and in theoretical operation, when employed in gyrating stone crushers, between a ball and socket

bearing and the bearing of a tapering journal in a straight cylinder, or of a straight journal in a tapering cylinder, on a line parallel and in contact with the vertical surface of the bearing from the bottom to the top of the taper. In the case decided in the Fifth circuit the proof of the prior art was the same as that in this record, the additional evidence here having reference only to the supposed longer durability, greater output, and other like advantages of machines with the straight taper bearing over those having the ball and socket; and it was there held that the "whereby" clause "does not add anything to the claim, which must be taken and considered as for 'a gyrating crusher shaft, having a tapering journal, c, in combination with a journal bearing.' That would seem to be the necessary construction of the claim, unless it may be allowable for any reason to substitute for "whereby" the words "so adjusted that"; but whether such a substitution could be deemed legitimate need not now be considered, and it is equally unnecessary to determine with accuracy to what extent the distinctions between the two kinds of bearings pointed out in the opinion below and elaborated in the argument here exist and are of practical importance. Some of the differences are clear enough, mathematically, and are perhaps practically important, but others are imaginary, or of no more than theoretical significance. For instance, it is not correct to say, as testified by an expert, that the resistance to pressure in a ball and socket bearing is limited "theoretically to a single point of contact." If the bearing of a ball were in a cylinder, as it might well be, the pressure would be so limited, and for that reason, doubtless, the wear upon a ball at the point of contact, and, in a less measure, the wear upon the surface of the cylinder would be more rapid at first, but the instant effect would be to produce a short line of contact parallel with the vertical surface of the cylinder, and, as the wearing progressed, that line would lengthen, and give to the ball, approximately, the form of a tapering journal; but when the bearing of the ball is in a closely fitting socket the pressure in any given direction must be of one-half of the superficial area of the ball against the corresponding half of the socket; and, if it be true-as the evidence shows it to bethat the ball and socket wear away more rapidly than the tapering journal and its bearing, it is chiefly because, in the ordinary form of construction, the socket in order to admit the ball into place must be composed of sections, and for that reason is subject to more rapid detrition. The patent in suit, however, is designed to include a combination of the tapering journal with a sectional as well as with an unbroken bearing, and consequently it is not material to the question of invention that one of the forms described has advantages over the other in respect to a feature which is common to the latter and the prior art. Besides, it is evident that the sectional feature of a ball and socket bearing is not indispensable. The socket need be only hemispherical, and when in that form it may be uncut. In the Rutter construction, for instance, if the lower half of the socket were removed, the bearing would still be adequate, or, if not, it would be lacking only in strength, which could be supplied by increasing the quantity of material in the part retained. Indeed, there is strong support in the evidence for the contention that the superiority of the Gates ma