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U. S. Circuit Court.--Eastern District of Pennsylvania. WRIGHT V. POSTBL. BUTLER, J.: Letters patent No. 363,936, granted to Charles A. Wright, for improvement in card-gilding machines, declared invalid, said Wright being held not to be the first inventor. Where, in a suit for infringement, it appeared that the application on which the patent in suit was granted was filed January, 1887, and that some months previous thereto the defendant had devised and constructed the machine complained of as an infringement, and that in the winter of 1883-84 the plaintiff had described it to his solicitor, and that in 1886 he repeated the description more fully, and that he did not intend at either date to reduce the invention to practice, his only concern being to protect himself in the construction and sale of the machine made under an earlier patent, and did not ever intend to apply for a patent atall unless it should seem necessary as a means for preventing others from making these machines, and that at the time of applying for patent he had not embodied his invention in a machine for practical use, and it further appeared that at the time of his first conversation with the solicitor he was as well prepared to reduce his invention to practice and apply for a patent as he was at the date of the second, and that any competent mechanic accustomed to such work could have constructed the machine from the first description almost, if not quite, as readily as from the second ; held that the plaintiff has failed in diligence. It is the duty of inventors to use reasonable diligence in reducing their conceptions to practice and applying for patents when desired, and they cannot neglect it without danger to their rights. The claims of letters patent No. 290,303, granted to Charles A. Wright, for machine for gilding cards, strictly construed, in view of the state of the art, and confined to the particular character of machine described and manufactured under it, and when thus construed the defendant declared not to infringe. U. S. Circuit Court.--District of Maine. ASHB v. MUTUAL LASTING COMPANY et al. COLT, J.: Suit was brought under Revised Statutes of the United States, section 4,915, to determine whether A. or G. and C. were the inventors of a machine for which a patent was granted to G. and C, claiming, "in a tack strip heading machine, the combination of a support for the tack strip, consisting of a disk having peripheral teeth to engage between the shanks of the strip, a clamping jaw, and a header." The evidence showed that A. was the first to suggest the use of a wheel having teeth to engage between the shanks of the strip, but that the wheel was to have a positive movement, which wasfound to work imperfectly, while in the perfected machine of G. and C. the strip is not fed by the positive movement of the wheel, but the wheel is moved by the strip. Held, that A.'s claim to be the inventor of the complete machine is not sustained, and his bill will be dismissed. American Locomotives in the Holy Land. United States Consul Henry Gillman, at Jerusalem, reports to the Department of State, under date of September 22, that three American locomotives made in Philadelphia, and intended for the new railway from Jerusalem to Jaffa, have arrived at Jaffa. The consul says it must interest American citizens to know that the first locomotives ever used in this ancient land were made in the new world.
