Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/610

 598 FEDERAL REPORTER. �the workman can keep the rod preesed upon the cap while he raises the iron and allows the solder to harden. �After a careful examination of the models of ail these tools, it does not appear to me that either the Barker or Bostwick models, drawings, or descriptions could ever have suggested to any mechanic the construction of the tool which is complaiued of as an infringement. I rather incline to think that so far as the complainants' devices would have any influence, it wonld he to lead the mind of a mechanic or an inventer away from the Tillery tool, and suggest devices based upon the annular or disk-shaped iron. To take the old-fashioned soldering iron, and, instead of shaping its end into a blunt point, to shape it into the arc of a circle for use in soldering a circular crease, could hardly be said to require invention ; and such a shaping of it cannot, I think, he made ont to be, in any fair sense, the equivalent of an annular iron, such as is used in either the Barker or the Bostwick patent; nor could either of those patents be oper- ated with a soldering iron of any such shape as the one used in the Tillery tool. �The conclusion to which I have come is that the two pat- ents on which the complainants base their claims are for combinations in which the form of the instrument is of the essence of the invention, and that the complainants are enti- tled only to substantially that form of instrument which, in his specifications and drawings, the patentee under whom they claim bas shown. Werncr v. King, 96 U. S. 230 ; II. Co. V. Sayks, 97 U. S. 556. �With regard to the validity of the claims of the re-issues of complainants' patents, I do not propose specifieally to decide, fu.rther than may be necessarilyinvolved indeciding that the present defendants have not been shown to bave been guilty of infringement. If the construction contended for by the com- plainants is to be put upon these re-issues, it must be said, in view of ail the proof, that they savor of a purpose to enlarge the claims to cover improvemeuts not even suggested in the original patents. The Tillery tool was contrived and had gone into use long before the re-issues were obtiiiued, and tho ����