Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/636

 624 FBDEBAL EEPOBTEE. �that neither No. 3 nor No. 16 bas the same action on the neck- band of a low-cut shirt that the Wilson collar has. �The defendants claim to have sbown that collars with a graduated band, being a continuons band, narrow in the con- ter, and having the baek button-hole in the body of the col- lar, and in substance like the defendants' collars, F, G, H, and I, existed before Wilson's invention. Mr. Coon, one of the defendants, testifies that in December, 1876, or January, 1877, which was before Wilson's invention, he saw at J. S. Lowery & Co.'s., in the city of New York, a collar like the defendants' collar, H, with the button-hole in the body of the collar, above the band. Neither the collar he so saw, nor any collar that was at Lowery & Co.'s at that date, is produced. He is asked whether the band was narrowest in the center, and he replies, "I should tbink it was." On eross-examina- tion, he states that he had known Lowery & Co. for 15 years or more, and been in the habit of selling to them; that he saw there only a few samples of the collar referred to ; that he bought none and took none away; that that was the first time he had seen any of such collars; and that he was not impressed with them at ail, and did not pay much attention to them, and did not think it worth while to make any like them. The success of the Wilson collar, and the fact that the defendants made none of their infringing collars till af ter they had seen the Wilson collar, and the fact that the Wilson collar supplied a want in the mechanical construction of a collar which, had been felt, and that many arrangements, more or less successful, had been devised to try and attain the resuit attained by the Wilson collar, go very far to show that no collar known to the. trade prier to the Wilson collar could have been substantially the Wilson collar, or it would at once have been taken up and have met with the same suc- cess which attended the Wilson collar. On this view, and on the evidence of Mr. Coon, taken as a whole, about this Low- ery collar, it cannot be held to have been shown satisfacto- rily that the defendants' collars existed in that collar before Wilson's invention. �Mr. Merwiu testiues that he sold some finished four-in- ��� �