I.T.S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Co., 272 U.S. 429 (1926)
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I.T.S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Company
No. 36
Argued April 13, 1926
Decided November 22, 1926
272 U.S. 429
CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
Syllabus
1. The Court may decline to consider points not presented in compliance with Rule 25, concerning briefs. P. 431.
2. A decree of infringement recovered by a patentee in a suit against a dealer in goods embodying his invention, does not bind by estoppel the manufacturer of the goods, from whom the dealer procured them, where the manufacturer refused to become a party to or assume any control over the suit and took no part in it otherwise than in the adjustment of the damages after a decree pro confesso had been entered. P. 432.
3. Patent 14,049, reissued, January 11, 1916, to the I.T.S. Company, as assignee, on an original patent to Tufford, of 1914, for resilient heels, is limited, as to Claims 5-9, to the specific form of three-point contact heel lift, whose upper side and breast edges, as well as all other points of the upper surface, lie below the plane passing through and defined by the rear upper edge and breast corners of the lift. P. 434.
4. Where an applicant for a patent to cover a new combination is compelled by the rejection of his application by the Patent Office to narrow his claim by the introduction of a new element, he cannot, after the issue of the patent, broaden his claim by dropping that element. P. 443.
5. Where a claim to a combination is thus restricted to specified elements, all must be regarded as material, and the limitations so imposed by the inventor must be strictly construed against him and looked upon as disclaimers. P. 444.
6. And the patentee, having thus narrowed his claim to obtain the patent, may not thereafter, by construction or by resort to the doctrine of equivalents, give the claim the larger scope which it might have had without the amendments amounting to a disclaimer. P. 444.
7. The claims in suit were not infringed by the heels made by defendant, which are not three-point-contact lifts, their upper side edges having no vertical curve and lying entirely in the same horizontal plane as the rear edge and breast corners. P. 444.
1 F.2d 780 affirmed.
Certiorari ( 266 U.S. 600) to a decree of the circuit court of appeals which affirmed one of the district court dismissing the bill in a patent infringement suit. The patent had been construed otherwise by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 260 Fed. 947. See also other cases cited in footnote 8 to the opinion.