Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/873

 866 FEDERAL REPORTER. �in practice, he bas always had a body of fluid in the well above the torpedo, whicb, of course, operated as tamping, and thus he has sueceeded in increasing the production of oil, and obtaining the results whicb the Eoberts process secures. �It is too obvious for deniai that there is no essential dif- ference between this process, as described in the answer, and. that described in the Eoberts patent, unless it be that the defendant does not fill the well with water up to its top. To establish that as an essential difference we are asked to give a very strict and limited construction to the patent, and to hold it indispensable to the Eoberts process that superincum- bent fluid tamping be introduced or admitted into the well, and used therein substantially as described, the well being entirely fiUed with water or fluid. It is said that if the well be fiUed to the top the casing will be destroyed by the explo- sion, or displaced, and that Eoberts does not now use bis own process, or allow the water to rise in the well above the bottom of the casing, or up to it. In short, the argument is that because the defendant does not allow the fluid in the well to rise above the bottom of the casing when he explodes a torpedo in a well, bis process is not the same as that of Eoberts, wbich requires the well to be entirely filled. �The argument is plausible, but unsound. It requires an unreasonable construction of the patent. Looking to the specification, it is evident that the presence of the superin- cumbent column of water was regarded as essential only for Bufficient tamping of the blast. It is not a fair construction of it that it requires the well to be filled to the top. Its lan- guage is : "When the flask has reached a position opposite the oil-bearing rock," (where the effeet of an explosion is de- sired,) "if the well above should not be filled with water when the flask is let down, which will almost always be the case, unless it has been pumped out, it is then to be filled up before the contents of the flask are ignited. The eolumns of water above the flask will then be of so great gravity as to confine the effeet of the explosion to the rock in the immediate yicinity of the flask, without materially affecting the stratums of rock above, and I make use of it for that purpose." It is obvions ����