Greenberg

This suit relates to Sundback patent 1,557,381, issued on October 13, 1925, on a hookless fastener, now owned by the plaintiff as assignee of the inventor. The patent was an improvement on Sundback patent 1,243,458, issued on October 16, 1917. See Lion Fastener v. Hookless Fastener Co. (C.C.A.3, 1934) 72 F.(2d) 985 .

The article covered by these patents is a fastener consisting of interlocking metallic members, disposed along the edges of stringers on opposite sides of a slit, and which are made to join by means of a slide through which they pass. The slide engages the projections and the recesses of the members and fastens the two sides of the slit. The interlocking is achieved by means of the fitting of the projections on the metallic members into corresponding recesses. The fastener has come to be known in popular language as “the zipper,” presumably because of the hissing sound which the slider makes when it is moved quickly across the stringer.

When the first article — to wjiich we shall refer as “the original zipper” — made its appearance, it was successful only in a limited way because — as one witness testified — it would not take washing, dry cleaning, or pressing. This…