Rees

The plaintiffs below (appellees here), as stockholders of the Progressive Evaporator Company, Inc., hereinafter called the Progressive Company, brought this suit in its behalf to enjoin the defendants, other than the Progressive Company, from infringing patent 1,413,135, covering a fruit-drying apparatus. Defendant Rees, the inventor, applied for the patent, but assigned the application to the Rees Blowpipe Manufacturing Company, a corporation substantially owned by him. Shortly after making this first application, he filed two others for improvements, which are still pending. In various ways the other defendants acquired interests in the patent and the two pending applications. On February 10, 1922, Ress and his codefendant Hine, being then supposed to be the owners, entered into a contract with the Progressive Company, by ‘which, in consideration of the payment of royalties and for other valuable considerations, they granted to it the exclusive right and privilege throughout the United States and foreign countries to manufacture and sell and use the apparatus. The Progressive Company was not at the time aware of the prior assignment to the Blowpipe Company, *277 and apparently…