Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/578

 DAT V. COMBINATION BUBBEB 00. "571 �decision upon which Mr. CommÏBsioner Leggett expressed an Opinion that her invention dated back to 1861. MacDonald V. Chase, 6 OfE. Gaz. 359. �Afterwards she brought a bill in the circuit court for the district of Massachusetts for an infringement of her patent, and in that case it was found, upon the evidence, by Shepley J., that she was the first inventor of the skirt protector de- scribed in her patent. The case was afterwards opened for the introduction of the De Porest patent, and, upon the case as presented with that patent in evidence, Lowell, J., found that her invention was made in 1861, before the patent of De Forest. �In the subsequent cases of MacDonald v. Shepard, in the district of Massachusetts, and MacDonald v. Sidenberg, in this district, on motions for preliminary injunetions, th€ de- cisions in the former case were foUowed by Lowell, J., there, and Blatehford, J. here, and temporary injunetions ordered. None of the evidence on which those findings were based in any of those cases has been reproduced in this case, nor have the defendants even set up any prior knowledge or invention, or use, in their answers to defeat the patent of De Forest. �On the hearing they have produced copies of the opinions filed in those cases, and argued that those decisions couelu- sively settle that MacDonald's invention was prior to De For- est's. None of the parties to this suit were parties to any of those; neither is it shown that any of these parties are privies to those, and it is elementary that judgments and decrees, in order to be conclusive evidence of facts, or evidence at ail in other proceedings, must be between the same parties, or privies to them. These decisions and opinions are author- ities for ail similar cases, but not estoppels in any, except such as may arise between those very parties, or others claiming under them. This case stands upon its own evidence, which shows nothing prior to the plaintiff's patent, except that Miss MacDonald was asked by the defendants, expressly dis claiming any intention of proving prior knowledge of De Forest's invention, when she commenced experimenting in water-proof skirt protectors, and answered in 1861; and. ����