Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/786

 774 FB1>EBAL KBPOBTEB. �pressure which will be exerted on the valve is adjusted, in part, by the size of the openings below. �Now, it is plain that this contrivance does not corne strictly within the language of the plaintiff's elaim of a safety valve, with the circular or annular lip, etc., The curved lip or flange in the defendant's valve, when he uses it, bas noth- ing to do with the pressure of the steam ; it merely prevents it from scaldingthe engineeri There is a lip or flange in the plaintiff's valve, as actually constructed, which serves this purpose, but which is not the flange mentioned in the claim. The plaintiff's claimed flange co-operates in the mak- ing of his stricture. The defendant's flange is merely at- tached to the sleeve which aids in making his stricture. But the important comparison is between the two things. If the defendant bas taken the plaintiff's invention, I should try to construe the claim to conform to the fact, rather than to leave the parties to the dubious expedient of a re-issue. �I understand the resemblances and differences to be these : The defendant, like the plaintiff, employa an additional sur- face to lift the valve as soon as it begins to blow ; and the pressure is regulated, in part, by a stricture. The defend- ant's valve is unlike the plaintiff's in the following partic- ulars : The additional area is not outside the ground joint, but inside; it is not acted on independently of the valve itself, but is a part of it. The escaping steam does not act at all by impact, but wholly by expansion. The stricture is not variable, opening wider as the power increases, but is ad- justed once for all by the operator. �Considering the state of the art, as I have found it to be, that Eichardson was not the firat to invent and apply, more or less well, the principle of the additional area, nor that of the stricture, he could not, whatever the words of his claim, successfully enjoin the use of a valve resembling his own only in its adoption of these general ideas. I am of opinion, then, that Eichardson neither claims, nor could properly claim, a valve having such a mode of operation as I find in this valve of the defendant. �Case No. 1,199 depends upon the decision of No. 1,184, because the improvement which forms the subject-matter of ��� �