Opinion of the Court.

249 U. S.

In The Steamship Jefferson, 215 U. S. 130, it was held that the admiralty jurisdiction extends to a claim for salvage service rendered to a vessel while undergoing repairs in a dry dock.

What we have said sufficiently indicates the decision that should be reached in the case at bar. The contract as made contemplated the performance of services and the furnishing of the necessary materials for the repairs of the steamship Yucatan. It was an entire contract, intended to take the ship as she was and to discharge her only when completely repaired and fit for the Alaskan voyage. It did not contemplate, as is contended by appellant, either a lease, or a contract for use in the nature of a lease, of the libelant's marine railway and machine shop. The use of these was but incidental; the vessel being hauled out, when consistent with the progress of other work of the Shipbuilding Company, for the purpose of exposing the ship's bottom to permit of the removal and replacement of the broken plates and the examination of the propeller and tail shaft. In The Planter (Peyroux v. Howard), 7 Pet. 324, 327, 341, the vessel, requiring repairs below the water line as well as above, was to be and in fact was hauled up out of the water; and it was held that the contract for materials furnished and work performed in repairing her under these circumstances was a maritime contract. We think the same rule must be applied to the case before us; that the doubt intimated in The Robert W. Parsons, 191 U. S. 17, 33, 34, must be laid aside; and that there is no difference in character as to repairs made upon the hull of a vessel dependent upon whether they are made while she is afloat, while in dry dock, or while hauled up by ways upon land. The nature of the service is identical in the several cases, and the admiralty jurisdiction extends to all.

This is recognized by the Act of Congress of June 23, 1910, с. 373, 36 Stat. 604, which declares that "Any per

119.

Opinion of the Court.

son furnishing repairs, supplies, or other necessaries, including the use of dry dock or marine railway, to a vessel, whether foreign or domestic," upon the order of a proper person, shall have a maritime lien upon the vessel.

The principle was recognized long ago by Mr. Justice Nelson in a case decided at the circuit, Wortman v. Griffith (1856), 3 Blatchf. 528, 30 Fed. Cas. No. 18,057, which was a libel in personam to recover compensation for services rendered in repairing a steamboat. Libelant was the owner of a shipyard with apparatus consisting of a railway cradle and other fixtures and implements used for the purpose of hauling vessels out of the water and sustaining them while being repaired. Certain rates of compensation were charged for hauling the vessel upon the ways, and a per diem charge for the time occupied while she was under repair, in cases where the owner of the yard and apparatus was not employed to do the work but the repairs were made by other shipmasters, as was done in that case. The owner of the yard and apparatus, together with his employees, superintended and conducted the operation of raising and lowering the vessel and also of fixing her upon the ways preparatory to the repairs, a service requiring skill and experience and essential to the process of repair. Mr. Justice Nelson held there was no substantial distinction between such a case and the case where the shipmaster was employed to make the repairs; and that the admiralty jurisdiction must be sustained.

Nor is the present case to be distinguished upon the ground that the repairs in which libelant was to furnish work and materials and the use of a marine railway and other equipment were to be done under the superintendence of the Steamship Company. This affected the quantum of the services and the extent of the responsibility, but not the essential character of the services or the nature of the contract, which, in our opinion, were maritime. Decree affirmed.

WERK ET AL., COPARTNERS UNDER THE NAME OF ROBERT F. WERK & COMPANY, v. PARKER ET AL., COPARTNERS UNDER THE NAME OF F. T. PARKER COMPANY.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT.

No. 73. Argued November 21, 1918. - Decided March 3, 1919.

The use of horse-hair mats for extracting oil, as abundantly shown in standard and easily accessible books of reference, may be noticed judicially. P. 132.

The application in the extraction of cotton-seed oil of mats made of horse hair or other long animal hair, woven in a manner designated, but without improvement in the art of weaving, held not invention, but merely mechanical adaptation of familiar materials and methods. P. 133.

Divisional patents Nos. 758,574 and 758,575, to Robert F. Werk, relating to oil-press mats for use in extracting cotton-seed oil, held invalid as to certain claims.

231 Fed. Rep. 121, affirmed.

THE case is stated in the opinion.

Mr. T. Hart Anderson for petitioners.

Mr. John Weaver for respondents.

MR. JUSTICE PITNEY delivered the opinion of the court.

Petitioners sued respondents in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for infringement of two divisional patents, Nos. 758,574 and 758,575, granted April 26, 1904, to Robert F. Werk. Defendants answered denying patentable novelty, and also denying infringement. The patents relate to an oilpress mat or cloth for use in the extraction of cotton-seed oil. The claim in issue under the former patent was for:

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Opinion of the Court.

"An oil-press mat or cloth made entirely of long animal hair and consisting of warp and weft threads, said weftthreads being composed exclusively of soft, pliable hair and the warp-threads greatly exceeding the weft-threads in number per square inch."

And in the second patent:

"An oil-press mat or cloth consisting of warp-threads and weft-threads, each composed exclusively of long hair derived from animals' tails and manes, which hair is soft and pliable; the warp-threads exceeding the weft-threads in number per square inch, and the weft-threads being thicker than the warp-threads."

The District Court dismissed the bill on the ground of non-infringement. 221 Fed. Rep. 644. The Circuit Court of Appeals, without discussing this question, affirmed the decree upon the ground that the patent disclosed no such novel information to the oil-pressing art as warranted a grant of the patent monopoly. 231 Fed. Rep. 121. At the conclusion of its opinion the court stated (p. 125) that in view of the fact that certain references quoted were not given in evidence, the sending down of the mandate would be deferred for a time to permit of an application for reargument or other form of relief to meet such references. Thereupon a petition for a rehearing was filed in behalf of appellants, which, while not disputing the accuracy of the results disclosed by the court's investigation, insisted that there was error in giving effect to the anticipatory matter thus disclosed, and in "failing to give controlling consideration to the fact that both of the two claims declared upon are laid not only to a particular woven structure of an oil-press mat, but also to an oil-press mat of such particular woven structure, when its threads are composed of animal hair." The rehearing was refused; after which the present writ of certiorari was allowed. 242 U. S. 645.

In the process of obtaining oil from cotton seed, the

seeds, having been cleaned and freed from lint, are hulled and chopped up, the meats being separated from the hulls; the meats are passed through a crusher, next cooked in water, and after this are spread upon an oil-press mat or cloth, the ends of which are folded over to cover the upper surface of the cooked meats. The mat with its inclosed mass of meats is then placed in a press and subjected to a pressure of about 4,000 pounds, which has the effect of expressing the oil through the mat as through a strainer.

One of the patents declares, and the evidence at the hearing indicated, that the highest grade of mat previously in general use was made of camel's hair, and that this was objectionable because of its tendency to pack and felt together when in use to such an extent as to hinder the free flow of the oil, and also because of its want of durability. The use of long animal hair, specifically horse hair, obviated this difficulty to such an extent as materially to reduce the percentage of oil wasted, as well as the cost of the mat in proportion to the product. Defendants accomplished like results with mats woven from human hair.

The Circuit Court of Appeals, while finding that the change from camel's hair to horse-hair mats was sufficient to constitute invention in the art, if this use of horse-hair mats was first disclosed by Werk, nevertheless found, from an examination of standard works, that the patentee's use was but a revival of an old and well-recognized use of such mats in the art of oil extraction. Reference was made to the British Encyclopedia, 9th ed., 1884, the Standard Dictionary of 1894, and a multitude of other publications long antedating the application for the patent.

It is not questioned that these references abundantly showed that the use of hair cloth, and especially horsehair cloth, in the making of oil-press mats or cloths, was well known in the art long before the patents in suit.

Nor is it questioned indeed, we deem it clear, beyond