Page:United States Reports, Volume 257.djvu/117

36 Rh of the Dickinson patent, so that in each the path of the candy is better described as an in-and-out movement than as a figure 8. The arrangement of the hooks by Langer is better than Dickinson's, but the principle of their operation is the same.

The counsel for the respondent, however, urge that the trough, not shown in the alleged infringement, is a necessary element of Dickinson's claim, because without it the batch of candy could not be supported against gravity, and he suggests no alternative. Dickinson says in his specifications that he shows a trough for supporting the candy, but any suitable support may be used which has the capacity for supporting the candy while it is being operated upon. Two of the machines, the Jenner and the first Thibodeau, which were in interference in the Patent Office with Dickinson, had the pins set, not in an upright but in a horizontal position, and thus the candy in their machines needed no trough support but rested on the pins themselves, and this Langer has adopted. Doubtless this was an improvement which was perhaps patentable, but none of the tribunals in the Patent Office proceedings deemed this to be more than an improved equivalent of the trough which did not take these machines out of the domination of the claim awarded to Dickinson. As the Dickinson patent is a generic patent, the doctrine of broad equivalents properly applies here. Morley Sewing Machine Co. v. Lancaster, 129 U. S. 263, 273; Miller v. Eagle Manufacturing Co., 151 U. S. 186, 207; Paper Bag Patent Case, 210 U. S. 405.

The Circuit Court of Appeals held that the issuing of the Langer patent, after the Dickinson patent, raised the presumption of a patentable difference between that patent and the Dickinson patent, and against infringement. It is not necessary for us, however, to discuss that question, for we think that whatever presumption against infringement may attach to the issuing of the second