Excelsior Steel Furnace Co. v. Williamson Heater Co.

In our opinion the decree of the district court is clearly right. It is not denied that the art prior to Scherer showed, not only every element of the claim in suit, but all the elements except the last (the notches) in combination. It is not of substantial importance that the Smith prior patent disclosure and the Wheeling prior use of the notch feature were applied to round pipe, rather than, as by Scherer, to rectangular pipe; nor that, in one form of the Wheeling *133structure, in bending the tongues through the notches, the room for manipulation was restricted. The uses were in the same art,…