Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/916

 904 FBDEBAL EEPOBTBB. �LowELL, G. J. I have to-day decided, in a case between the parties to this suit,* that the plaintifFs' patent for a presser- foot adapted to sewing stay-strips over the outward turned seams of boots and shoes is valid. The present controversy relates to another patent granted to the plaintif Sutherland, re-issue No. 7,510, for a stay-strip as a new article of manu- facture. The stay-strip, as described, is a narrow piece of leather folded or doubled so as to fit over the projecting seam, and with a channel or groove to hug or fit that seam, and other grooves at the sides of the seam calculated tp receive the stitches by which the stay is fastened to thebootor shoe. The projection of the peam raises a fiUet, as it is called, or swell, which serves to protect the stitches, and this is done still further by the beads or swells or fiUets which bound the grooves on the edges of the stay-strip. The specification ex- plains one great advantage of a strip thus prepared to be that it can be sewed automatically to the boot or shoe with- out troubling the operator to guide it by hand so much as he must a strip of a different shape. He claims this stay-strip in its several forma. �The defendants make a stay-strip with beaded edges suited to receive the stitches. I cannot find in the article which they make any decided central groove or corrugation adapted to the seam, They do not, therefore, infringe the first claim or the third, but do corne within the second, which is for the stay-pieee with these side grooves, The decision, then, must depend upon the validity of the re-issued patent. �The original, No. 176,094, was for an improvement in stay- seaming boot or shoe uppers, and described the method of putting a stay, with channels for the stitches, over an outward turned seam, as contrasted with the old method of turning the seam inward and leaving it unprotected. I am unable to find in it any mention of automatie sewing, or of a central channel to hug or fit the seam. On the contrary, the method described is simply to put a folded or double strip over the seam and sew it there. This will iorm a channel in the fin- ished work, as the model from the patent-office, when eut �*A>ife, 713. ��� �