Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/207

DOWNTON V. YAEGER MILLING CO. 199 �DowNTON V. Yaeoer Milling Co. �{Gircuit Court, E. D. Missouri. 1880.) �Patent — Milling JProcess — Ubb of Rolls. — A patent for the manu- facture of middlings flour bypassing themiddlings, after Iheir discharge from a purifier, tlirough or betwecn rolls, is void for want of noveltj' and uncertainty, when such rolls are' inadequate to produce the resuit �described. �W. G. Rainey and George Harding, for plaintiff. �G. M. Stewart and F. W. Cotzhausen, for defendant. �Treat, J., (orally.) I am prepared to announce my conclu- sion in the case of Downton v. The Yaeger Milling Company-. Tliis case was presented at great length last spring, and it was announced to counsel at that time that if the court was com- pelled, as matters then stood, to decide the case, it -would have to decide it in a certain way, but it -would be more sat- isfaetory if on certain points it could be more fully presented. That has been done, and very ably. One of the points as to which the court was troubled was whether, under the existing state of the art, this being a process patent, there was any noveity in it. Second, was the patent itself sufficiently spe- cifie in its terms to inake it practicable, or, in other words, patentable in the form pursued. �It is not proposed this morning to go through the milling literature with regard to these matters, as the various stages of ail the matters involved were fully considered at the time of the hearing of the milling cases before Judges Dillon, Nel- son and myself. We were then very fully instructed as to this new process, and also as to the state of the art wlien the new process arose, and the conclusions announced in that case are very familiar to the counsel in this case, and to the milling public generally, by this time. �Now the niills using this new process interject rolls at various stages in connection with grinding, and, after purify- ing', regrinding the purified middlings. Counsel were asked whether they construed this particular patent as covering any use of rolls on purified middlings at any stage of the suc- cessive grindings, or whether, under their construction of the ��� �