United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Newton v. Furst & Bradley Company, 119 U.S. 373 (1886)

Newton v. Furst and Bradley Company

Argued December 3, 1886

Decided December 13, 1886

119 U.S. 373

Syllabus

The first claim of reissued letters patent No. 8986, granted to Robert Newton, December 2d 1879, for an improvement in gang ploughs (the original patent, No. 56,812, having been granted to F. S. Davenport, as inventor, October 9th, 1886), namely,

"1. In a wheel plough, the combination, with a swing axle and ground or carrying wheel, of friction clutch mechanism and means for engaging and disengaging the latter with the ground or carrying wheel, said parts being constructed and adapted to raise the plough by locking the swing axle to the carrying wheel by friction clutch engagement, and raise the plough beam by the draft or power of the team, substantially as set forth,"

is, in view of the state of the art at the time of the invention of Davenport, not infringed by an apparatus in which the axle and the friction clutch mechanism are different, as devices, from those of the patent.

The first claim of the reissue is invalid, the reissue having been applied for more than thirteen years after the original patent was granted and after the defendant had begun to make machines of the pattern complained of.

The defendant's machine did not infringe the original patent, and the reissue was taken to cover it.

Page 119 U. S. 374

This was a bill in equity to recover for the infringement of letters patent. The case is stated in the opinion of the Court.