Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/846

 832 7&DEBAL BEPOBTEB. �no other ; and that means, simply, one comparatively or approximately tight — one tight enough to exclude a large jet of steam, and at the same time open enough to admit the percolation of steam through it. �It is obvious that what this inventor wished to accomplish was to moisten his tobacco without -wetting it. Now, literally, a thing which is moist may be said to be wet; but there is, after all, a practioal difference between -wet tobacco and moist tobacco, which is of great consequence in the manufacture of this commodity, and to the suc- cess of this process, and complainant intended by his mechanism to obtain, by means of his porous tobacco holder, just that degree of warmth and moisture which would cause the resweating of the leaves, 80 as to secure an equal distribution of the coloring matter, and per- haps of the essential oil of the tobacco, through the whole contents of the mass subjected to the process, so as to make it nearly homogeneous in color and quality. If, therefore, it was the intention of complain- ant, and a necessary part of his device, that the tobacco holder should be open or porous enough to admit moisture, I do not think defend- ant can be allowed to infringe by uaing a tobacco holder a little more porous or open. The essential feature of complainant's invention consists in subjecting the mass of leaf tobacco to moisture and beat in a comparatively close wooden box for a sufficient time to have it undergo the process of resweatmg ; and it is no answer to complain- ant's charge of infringement of his patent to say that defendant's box is not quite so tight as that complainant deems desirable or nec- essary for the most satisfactory operation of his device. �I conclude, then, that the defendant's device, in its mode of con- struction and operation, manifestly infringes the complainant's patent. �The. next and last question to be considered is as to the novelty of complainant's device. Two devices for steaming tobacco are shown in the proof — one, the Oppelt patent of June 16, 1874; and the other, the Wenderoth patent of 1878. An examination of these mechanisms shows them both to be literally tobacco steamers. They consist of metal tanks, and within a metal tobacco holder, into which the steam was to be directly admitted ; and the proof shows that they do not produce the resuit secured by the complainant's invention. Contact with the metal taints and injures the tobacco operated upon, and the free admission of steam weta, and, to some extent, cooks the tobacco, The porous wooden tobacco holder devised by Eobinson seems, from the proof, to stimulate that slow fermentation and action in the constituent elements of the leaf which is required to make the ��� �