Citation Numbers: 22 F. 399
Judges: Blodgett
Filed Date: 8/4/1884
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 9/9/2022
This is a hill to restrain the infringement of letters patent No. 132,174, issued to Henry E. Heyel, assignee of the American Paper Box Company, dated October 8, 1872, for “an improvement in boxes,” and for an accounting. Defendants deny infringement, and also insist that the Heyel patent is void for want of novelty. Tlie complainant’s patent is for a device in the manufacture of “boxes to be made of paper, pasteboard, thin wood, or other flexible material;” and the specifications describe the box as constructed from a rectangular piece of paper or other material, in which slits are cut at right angles to the sides of the blank so as to form flaps, which are turned up to a right angle with the bottom, thus forming the sides and ends of the box. The outer flaps are so formed that when folded over around the end flap their ends will not overlap, hut will meet flush witli each other and extend to the top of the box, and the outer flaps are thus secured in place by staples applied horizontally, or nearly so, and the legs of the staples are driven through both flaps and clinched on the inside. A box constructed after the description of complainant’s patent was adapted to receive a cover; the cover being constructed in the same manner as the body of the box. The defendants sell a kind of tray made of thin wood or veneer, with sloping sides or ends, used mainly by retail grocers as packages for butter, cheese, honey, and other commodities. Their tray has no cover, and is not adapted to receive one, hut the ends of the flaps are fastened by staples applied horizontally through all the flaps, and clinched on the Inside. In view of the state of the art, as disclosed in the proof, I am of opinion that complainant’s patent must be strictly construed. The patent states that the flaps are to he bent or folded perpendicularly to the plane of the blank; that is, his box must have four perpendicular sides, and from the necessity of the case, must he just half as deep as it is wide, because he provides that the ends of the flaps, b, b, must meet flush in the center of the end.
The defendants’ tray is made by cutting the blanks at an angle, so that when the ends and sides are turned up they give the box a tray-