This is a suit in equity, brought in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Connecticut, by the Parker & Whipple Company, a corporation of Connecticut, and Arthur E. Hotchkiss, against the Yale Clock Company, a corporation of Connecticut, and Henry C. Shelton, Frederick A. Lane, and Paschal Converse, directors of the latter company. The suit is founded on reissued letters patent No. 10,062, granted March 14, 1882, to Arthur E. Hotchkiss, for improvements in clock movements , on an application for a reissue filed July 19, 1881; the original patent, No. 221, 310, having been granted to Hotchkiss, November 4, 1879, on an application filed July 29, 1879, and a prior reissue, No. 9,656, having been granted April 12, 1881. The circuit court dismissed the bill, upon the ground that the invention described in the first eight claims of the reissue, which are the claims alleged to have been infringed, was an invention of which no trace was to be found in the original specification, and was manifestly other and different from that which was the subject of the original patent, and that the statute in regard to reissues forbids such a radical transformation of a patent as was attempted in this case. 21 Blatchf. 485, 18 Fed. Rep. 43. The plaintiffs have appealed to this court.
The circumstances of this case are so well stated in the opinion delivered by Judge SHIPMAN, holding the circuit court, that we adopt his language, as follows:
'At the date of the invention, expensive clocks of tiny size were being made, which met with favor from the public. They were convenient and attractive, and the main object of the patentee (the original specification says a leading object) was to make a good time-keeping clock of the like small size, which could be furnished to the public at the small price which characterizes the manufacture of Connecticut clocks. The clock was devised for this end, unquestionably with much study and painstaking, and I shall assume that the invention, as claimed in the reissue, was both novel and patentable. Much skill and ingenuity have been displayed in attacking and defending these contested points, but as I think that a vital point of the plaintiff's case depends upon the validity of the reissue, I shall confine myself to that question.