Page:United States Reports, Volume 257.djvu/116

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HILDRETH v. MASTORAS.
35
27.
Opinion of the Court.

duce its cost to one-tenth of what it had been before him, and to enlarge the field of the art. He was, therefore, a pioneer.

We come now to the question of infringement. In the Langer patent, applied for in 1916 and issued in 1917, which the alleged infringement embodies, there is a so-called "floating puller," which is carried through a course of travel corresponding in form to the figure 8, and around fixed supporting pins arranged concentrically within the two circular portions of figure 8. The candy is pulled by the floating puller and alternately carried thereby around the fixed supporting pins. Instead of having Dickinson's single stationary pin and two other pins which move relatively to it and to one another, the machine of the Langer patent has two stationary pins and a third one which moves relatively to both of them in an actual and rigid figure 8.

Taking the first claim of Dickinson's patent as it reads, one can trace every element of it in the Langer machine. We find there a plurality of oppositely-disposed candy hooks or supports. The candy-puller is found in the movable pin of Langer, and a relative in-and-out motion in the pulling process is palpably present.

Both Dickinson and Langer in their specifications characterize the path of the candy under the operation of the hooks as being along a course of travel corresponding in form to the figure 8. The Circuit Court of Appeals found, however, that the in-and-out movement of the Langer patent was different from the in-and-out movement of the Dickinson patent, in that it was a true figure 8 in the former, whereas in the Dickinson patent the candy follows a path of a series of V's and not a true figure 8 path at all. We differ from the Court of Appeals in this view. The actual movement of the candy in the Langer patent, even though the movable pin follows a fixed path of figure 8, forms a succession of V's closely resembling the V's