Nathan Clifford

“ Evidence of a satisfactory character is exhibited to show that the assignor of the complainants was the first person to organize an operative machine to make paper-bags from a roll of paper in the flat sheet by a transverse cut across the same with a knife having five planes, so that the blanks, so called, when cut and folded, will present a paper-bag of the form and description given in the specification and drawings of the patent. ”

“ Authorities concur that the substantial equivalent of a thing, in the sense of the patent law, is the same as the thing itself; so that if two devices do the same work in substantially the same way, and accomplish substantially the same result, they are the same, even though they differ in name, form, or shape. ”

“ Wide differences exist in the arrangement of the devices composing the operative parts of the respondents' machine in question, from those exhibited in the machine of the complainants; but the frames are not substantially different, and the machine of the respondents has two uprights which afford bearings for the shaft and for the roller on which the paper is wound, and for two sets of feed-rollers which perform the same function as the feed-rollers in the complainants' patent. ”