Railroad Co. v. Dubois

79 U.S. 47 (____) 12 Wall. 47

RAILROAD COMPANY
v.
DUBOIS.

Supreme Court of United States.

Messrs. W. Schley and T. Donaldson, for the plaintiff in error.

Messrs. W.H. Armstrong and S. Linn, contra.

Mr. Justice STRONG delivered the opinion of the court.

The court below, refusing to give the first instruction asked for by the defendants, construed the first claim in the plaintiff's patent to be, not for a process, but for a device, or instrument to be employed in a process, the instrument being a floating coffer-dam constructed as described in the specification, in which the masonry of the pier might be laid and sunk to the foundation by its own gravity. In this it is now insisted the court erred. We are of opinion, however, that the construction given to this claim was correct, and that the defendants were not entitled to an affirmative response to their prayer. Undoubtedly a patentee may claim and obtain a patent for an entire combination, or process, and also for such parts of the combination or process as are new and useful, or he may claim and obtain a patent for both. That this patentee did not intend by his first claim to appropriate the process of building and setting piers which he had previously described in his specification is made evident by several consideration. The words by which the claim is immediately preceded tend strongly to show this. The patentee had described the common method of building and setting piers, by a stationary coffer-dam built up from the bottom, out of which the water was pumped. The inconvenience and expense of this he proposed to obviate. He then added, "to enable others to perform with my invention, I will proceed to describe its construction and operation." Did he mean construction of a process? Following this was a description of a floating caisson, or coffer-dam, with all the details of its construction, and also of guide-piles, with a mode for their use in directing the coffer-dam in its descent with the pier to the foundation. He then added, "I have given a minute description of means for carrying out my invention, but I do not wish to be confined to those means [by which he plainly meant process], but desire to be protected in the principle of operation embodied in a floating coffer-dam, substantially as described, for building and setting piers for bridges and other structures." This can hardly mean anything else than a claim for the principle of operating in building and setting piers through the instrumentality of a floating coffer-dam, substantially such as he had previously described. The language is awkward, but it is reasonably intelligible. It was not the principle of operating by what was embodied in a process, such as had been described, that he desired to be protected in, but that embodied, or wholly contained, in a coffer-dam. This he had described as an improved substitute for a stationary dam. If it was not the method or process that he sought protection for, it is incredible that he would have described it as embodied (that is, collected into a whole) in one of the devices used in the process. Now, reading the first claim in connection with this language of the specification that immediately precedes it, we cannot doubt that the claim is for the instrument, or device, denominated a floating coffer-dam, substantially such as described in the specification, to be used in building and setting piers. It is clear the invention was regarded by the patentee as a different thing from the mode of using it. "Having," said he, "described one mode of carrying out my invention, what I claim and desire to secure by letters-patent is, 1st, building and setting piers by means of a floating coffer-dam, substantially as set forth; 2d, the use of the tube which constitutes the dam for incasing and strengthening the pier, substantially as set forth; 3d, the guide-piles A A, in combination with a floating coffer-dam, substantially as and for the purpose set forth." If his intention was to claim the process, or a process substantially such as described in the specification, it was easy to say so, and it was worse than useless to mention only one of the means or instruments by which the process was conducted. Looking, also, at the third claim, which is plainly for a combination of devices, a combination of a floating coffer-dam with guide-piles, substantially as described, and for the purposes described, to wit, building and setting piers, it is evident the first claim was for the caisson, or coffer-dam. Why claim such a combination if the first claim was for a process of which the guide-piles and the floating dam were essential component parts?

At the argument much importance was attached, on behalf of the plaintiffs in error, to the fact that the language of the claim is, "building and setting" piers by means of a floating coffer-dam, and it was urged that, in the construction given to it by the court, the idea of "setting" the pier is ignored. But the setting of a pier by means of a floating dam is inseparable from the construction of a pier. It is a part of the process of building. The building consists in laying the masonry of the pier within the dam, causing it to descend by its own gravity towards the bottom until it reaches the foundation. This descent is the setting. The floating coffer is, therefore, an instrument not only for building, but for setting piers. Hence, if the claim was, as we think, for the floating dam alone, when used for the purpose designated, and not for its use in combination with the other devices, and with the process described in the specification (what the inventor called "one mode of carrying out his invention"), it was well described as a means for building and setting piers.

The plaintiffs in error also complain that the court construed the second claim of the patent to be for the use of the tube, or material of which the dam is made, for incasing and strengthening the pier, no matter whether it be first placed in position entire or be built in sections as the masonry progresses. It is argued the claim embraced only an iron sectional tube or caisson. It is very manifest, however, that the construction given to it was right. The specification expressly describes the tube as "composed of boiler-plate metal or other suitable material," and, again, it states "that a floating water-tight coffer-dam, operating on the principle described, might be made of wood or other material than boiler-plate metal." It is equally plain that a tube composed of sections was not exclusively meant. The claim refers to the specification, and that explains both its construction and its possible use in strengthening the piers. By reference to it it will be seen that the tube is not necessarily constituted of several sections. Its formation is described to be, constructing a strong timber or other suitable character of platform, and bolting to its upper side one section of a hollow rectangular, or other desirable form of box or tube, which is used to incase or strengthen the pier, the tube being composed of boiler-plate metal or other suitable material. This platform and section of the tube are then caulked and pitched, or cemented, so as to be water-tight at bottom and on all sides, except at top, and strengthened, laterally and longitudinally, by means of strong rods. It is then complete and ready for all the uses for which it is designed. Sections are added only when required by the depth of the water, and when the tube has sunk in consequence of the masonry laid in it nearly to a level of the water surface, though, if desired, they may be continued to the top of the pier. There is nothing that would justify our holding that the claim demands a tube composed of more than one section. It is the use of the tube, whether longer or shorter, no matter what its shape or material, or of how many parts consisting, that the claim sought to cover.

What has been said is sufficient to show that, in our opinion, the Circuit Court did not misinterpret the first, the second, or the third claim of the patentee.

The next assignment of error, not disposed of by the observations we have already made, is, that the court refused to charge the jury as requested in the defendants' eighth prayer.^[*] The theory of this prayer was twofold. The defendants had pleaded that the letters-patent of the plaintiff were obtained by fraud and imposition on the Patent Office, and the prayer assumed that his not claiming the invention when Parker described his plan for building and setting the piers of the bridge established the fraud pleaded. The prayer also assumed that the plaintiff's silence, when Parker's plans were revealed, coupled with the facts that Parker was, at the time, preparing for the work of actual construction, that he subsequently proceeded with his plan, and that the plaintiff's patent was afterwards applied for and obtained, amounted to an estoppel in pais. It is impossible, however, to discover how the plaintiff's silence on the occasion mentioned tended at all to show a fraud upon the Patent Office, much less that it constituted a fraud in law, so as to justify the court in ruling that he could not maintain his action. And the defendants, when sued for an infringement, were not at liberty to set up as a defence that the patent had been fraudulently obtained, no fraud appearing upon its face.^[*]

Nor was there any case presented by the prayer that amounted to an estoppel. No principle is better settled than that a party is not estopped by his silence unless it has misled another to his hurt.^[†] There was no evidence of any such misleading stated in the prayer or found in the case. The patent was granted September 23, 1862. It nowhere appears that before that day the defendants had expended one dollar in building their piers. Moreover, the point does not negative knowledge by Parker of the plaintiff's invention before the conversation of which it speaks took place; and there is some reason found in the evidence for believing that the plaintiff's plans had been revealed to Parker by Crossman, to whom the plaintiff had partially explained them, before that conversation. The court could not, therefore, have given the instruction asked, even if the plaintiff was under obligation to disclose his invention to Mr. Parker, which we are not prepared to assert.

The only remaining assignment of error is, that the court declined instructing the jury as requested, that in considering the question whether the plaintiff was or was not the first and original inventor of the improvement described in his patent, they might and ought to consider the evidence in the cause in relation to the state of the art of building and setting piers known at the time of the alleged invention of the plaintiff. Upon this subject the court did charge the jury that they had a right to take into consideration the knowledge which they might find to have been possessed, prior to the date of the plaintiff's patent, by the several witnesses whose names were given in the notice of defence, and who had been examined; and also the description of such constructions in Mahan's Civil Engineering, and the patent of George A. Parker, and also all description of his invention made by the plaintiff to any one prior to the date of his patent in 1861 or '62, and also the conversation (whatever they might find it to have been) between the plaintiff and the engineer of the defendants in 1862, prior to the date of the plaintiff's application for a patent. This was all the defendants had a right to ask. They had given notice of nothing more. They had not apprised the plaintiff that the novelty of his invention would be assailed by any other evidence than such as they had particularized in their notice of defence. While, therefore, evidence in regard to the state of the art was proper to be considered by the court in construing the patent and determining what invention was claimed, it had no legitimate bearing upon the question whether the patentee was the first inventor.

DECREE AFFIRMED.

NOTES

[*] See it, supra, at top of p. 55.

[*] Rubber Company v. Goodyear, 9 Wallace, 788.

[†] Hill v. Epley, 7 Casey, 334.