Townsend

Application is made in this suit for a temporary injunction. Infringement is charged, the patent involved being for an apparatus commonly known as an oil and gas separator. Such devices are in general use in the oil fields, and serve the purpose of separating and collecting the gas which accompanies the flow of crude oil from producing wells. No detailed description of the process by which the desired result is accomplished need be given. Method and means have been given elaborate attention in decisions made in eases wherein the parties now litigating were before the court. The Circuit Court of Appeals, in Lorraine v. Townsend, 290 F. 54 , considered the patent of the plaintiff here, and held that it was valid, although entitled to no< claim as of generic or pioneer character.

The patentable invention found was held to affect only the manner in which the oil, upon entering the chamber of the trap, was distributed. The court determined that the claims of the Trumble patent were valid only when read upon an apparatus “by which substantially the whole body of oil is spread as a film or thin sheet on a backing wall, ■and is not, in the course of the process of separation, broken up…