Suit by petitioner against Chain Belt Company et al. for infringment of a patent considered in No. 22. The bill contains the usual allegations, and prays for an accounting, for damages, and injunctions, preliminary and final.
A copy of the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in the suit of the Scaffold Company against Egbert Whitney, expressing the judgment of the court sustaining the validity of the patent and adjudging Whitney to be an infringer of it, is attached to the bill.
The answer denied invention and sets forth a number of patents as anticipations, among others, a patent to William Murray. A dismissal of the suit was prayed.
A trial was had upon the issues thus made, which resulted in an interlocutory decree awarding an injunction, adjudging infringement, and an accounting.
'That an injunction be issued under the seal of this court unto the said Chain Belt Company, and the said Egbert Whitney, enjoining them, and each of them, their several agents, officers, employes, and all persons in privity with them, and each of them, from making or selling, or causing to be made or sold, the machine known as 'Whitney Scaffold Hoist Machines' and 'Little Wonder' machines, to be used in the combinations of claims 1 and 3 of said U.S. patent No. 959,008, or from using or causing said machines to be used in the combinations of said claims, or from infringing upon said claims in any manner whatsoever.'
The Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court that the Henderson patent exhibited invention, expressing the view, however, that, while its advance was slight, it was 'not so wholly wanting in invention or novelty as to justify a finding contrary to the presumptive validity of the grant to him.' The court fortified its views by the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit in New York Scaffolding Co. v. Whitney, 224 Fed. 452, 140 C. C. A. 138, citing, however, to the contrary, the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit, in New York Scaffolding Co. v. Liebel-Binney Construction Co., 243 Fed. 577, 156 C. C. A. 275, the decision we have just affirmed. 254 U.S. 32, 41 Sup. Ct. 21, 65 L. Ed. --.
The court, however, decided that the decree was 'erroneous in finding infringement in the manufacture or sale or in any use of the Little Wonder machine.' The decree of the District Court was reversed, with directions to enter a decree in accordance with the views expressed.
The Henderson patent was made the basis of recovery in New York Scaffolding Co. v. Liebel-Binney Construction Co., No. 22, just decided, and there we estimated its inventive quality as tested by the prior art, and as representative of that we took the patent of William Murray, accepting it as an advance upon the prior art.