SUPREME COURT-CIVIL SITTINGS.

Evening Star, Issue 9471, 16 August 1894, Page 2

SUPREME COURT-CIVIL SITTINGS.

(Before His Honor Mr Justice Williams.) The Defiance Ciiukn Company v. Tait. —Claim for an injunction. The witnesses examined late yeitcrday afternoon were Edwin Grigg (tinsmith) and John Charles Walters (cheesemaker). To-day's business began with the examination of Robert Harding (mechanical engineer), who said, among other things, that if the "Champion" churn had been made first and then the " Defiance," he should say that the latter was a decided infringement of the other's rights. The rest of the witnesses were Robert H. Postlethwaite (engineer), Thomas Stevenson (engineer), Henry Hughes (patent agent), Henry E. Shacklock (ironfounder), llobert Telfer (butter maker), W. $. Johnson (butter maker), and William Eric Reynolds (agent). Mr Chapman began to open the defence at 3p. m. Defendant's case, he said, was that Tait's appliance, which he invented and applied to churning in the way now seen, was a different appliance to plaintiffs'. What the plaintiffs' appliance was was partly a question of construction of their patent specifications. Ho (Mr Chapman) would contend hereafter that the plainlills' appliance was the churn with the large screw working underneath the ribs. Witnesses for the defence would say that Tait's appliance was not a screw. What it ought to be termed was immaterial. He (Mr Chapman) called it a paddle, but tho term did not matter. What it did was something different from u screw. A screw was not necessary for the motion required—it was not necessary for the machine that Tait had invented, and the churn was a very different one from that produced by plaintiff. The relative merits of the two churns was not of importance. The churn now produced by plaintiffs was no doubt an excellent churn, but it would be one of the questions for tho Court to decide whether that was the churn ho patented. Nowhere in plaintiffs' specifications or drawings Was anything seen like that which they now produced. Learned counsel then proceeded to deal with particulars, and the case was proceeding at 4.10 p.m.