United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Keystone Bridge Company v. Phoenix Iron Company, 95 U.S. 274 (1877)

Keystone Bridge Company v. Phoenix Iron Company

95 U.S. 274

Syllabus

1. The manufacture of round or cylindrical bars flattened and drilled at the eye, for use in the lower chords of iron truss bridges, is not an infringement of letters patent for an improvement in such bridges where the claim in the specification describes the patented invention as consisting in the use of wide and thin drilled eye bars applied on edge.

2. Although one of the patents under consideration in this suit embraced the use of wide and thin bars, upset and widened at the ends by compression to give additional strength, it does not claim that process. Therefore, the use of

round or cylindrical bars strengthened in a similar manner is not an infringement of the patent. Quaere would such a process have been patentable?

3. A patentee, in a suit upon his patent, is bound by the claim therein set forth and cannot go beyond it.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Court.