United States Appliance Corp. v. Beauty Shop Supply Co.

This is an appeal from a decree for the defendants entered by the United States *150 District Court for the Northern District of California, Southern Division, in an action for the infringement of U. S. patent No. 1,984,585 for hair waving apparatus issued to the plaintiff as assignee of the defendant Ralph M. Keele.

At the time of the trial the appellant relied upon the twelve claims of the patent in suit, except claims 8 and 9. Of these claims it states in its brief that claim 3 is typical and is as follows: “3. In permanent hair waving apparatus, a jacket adapted to be applied about a waving form, said jacket being formed of a single integral piece of resilient rubber, and a holder to which said jacket is detachably secured, said holder including opposed relatively movable members secured to opposed wall portions of the jacket.”

It will be observed that this is a very narrow claim, consisting of but two very simple elements, one being a jacket of “a single piece of resilient rubber” to be applied over a “waving form”, (a short rod known to the trade as a “curler”) and a “holder” for applying this jacket. In practice this holder, or clip, consists of two pieces of metal hinged…