John Clarkson Birdsell and the huller fight that reached the Supreme Court

1855–1884 · A PATENT, A CONGRESSIONAL EXTENSION FIGHT, AND A CITED PRECEDENT

The precedent: The clover huller's firm is carried in the Businesses section; the invention and its litigation belong here. John Clarkson Birdsell, working at West Henrietta, New York, took Letters Patent No. 20,249 on 18 May 1858 for his improvement in machines for threshing and hulling clover seed — the local account of a first patent in December 1855 stands beside it in the Businesses entry, and the patent of record is the 1858 grant, reissued in 1862. The machine took first prize at the New York State Fair in 1857 and made its maker's name; the works came to South Bend in the move the Businesses section tells. What makes the huller a matter of legal rather than merely local history is the fight its owner carried on two fronts through the 1870s and 1880s.

The first was Congress: the patent's term ran toward its end while the invention's value stood unexhausted, and Birdsell petitioned the House for a special extension, his petition putting the machine's price to the farmer at $150 and the petitions and committee papers of the fight filling the congressional record of the decade — the extension campaign is documented, win or lose on particular bills, in the memorials, the printed petitions, and the committee reports of the 1870s. The second front was the courts, and it produced the holding for which the South Bend name still appears in the patent-law casebooks. Birdsell, owner of the patent, had given his own Birdsell Manufacturing Company an exclusive oral license; in an equity suit against the Ashland Machine Company he recovered judgment for infringement — for one dollar in nominal damages.

He then sued other users of the infringing machine, Shaliol and Feikert, and the circuit court dismissed his bill, holding him estopped by the dollar: a recovery so small, on that theory, ended the matter. The Supreme Court reversed. In Birdsell v. Shaliol, 112 U.S. 485, argued 12 November 1884 and decided 8 December 1884, Justice Gray writing, the Court held that a judgment for nominal damages against one infringer does not bar a later suit against another user of the same infringing machine — the rule the case is still cited for. A South Bend manufacturer's clover huller thus fixed a point of federal patent law: an inventor's dollar judgment against one copyist does not exhaust his rights against the rest. Cross-reference: the company's works, its ESOP-era successors, and its 1970s farm-implement days are the Businesses section's business.

Sources:

1. Birdsell v. Shaliol, 112 U.S. 485 (1884) — the opinion itself, via Justia: argued 12 November 1884, decided 8 December 1884, Gray, J.; the exclusive oral license to the Birdsell Manufacturing Company; the $1 judgment against the Ashland Machine Company; the dismissal reversed.
2. United States Patent record: Letters Patent No. 20,249, 18 May 1858, reissued 1862 — as carried in the Businesses section of this history, with the December 1855 local account printed beside it there.
3. Congressional record of the 1870s — Birdsell's petitions and memorials for extension of the huller patent, including his statement pricing the machine at $150, via the U.S. Congressional Serial Set and the Congressional Record indexes of the period.
4. The History Museum and county record as carried in the Businesses section — the West Henrietta experiments of 1850–53 and the removal of the works to South Bend.