US Court of Appeals agrees with patent commissioner and against Fred Locke for his glaze fusing patent application

The porcelain insulator is such a familiar and widely extended device that a recent decision of Justice Morris of the United States Court of Appeals in relation to the patentability of one form of it is of general interest. The appeal was taken by Howard P. Dennison against a decision of the commissioner of patents. The technical questions involved were the patentability of a two-part porcelain insulator and the substitution of fusing for cement. The alleged invention consisted of an insulator formed of two or more shells of suitable insulating material, which are secured together by inserting one into the other and then fusing them so as to form practically but a singe piece. The insulating material employed was porcelain, in which, of course, there was no novelty, and none was claimed. An English patent issued to Varley in 1861 shows an insulating device composed of two shells or cups of porcelain secured together by fixing one into the other and then connecting them together by cement. The novelty claimed in the case just decided was the fusing of the two cups or shells instead of cementing them. But it was held that there was no novelty in this manner of working, it being an ordinary process. It had already been testified in an interference proceeding connected with this case and growing out of it that the usual and ordinary process of connecting two pieces of porcelain is "either with glaze or with slip." Slip is potter's clay in a very liquid state, and glaze is nothing but glass. Connecting with glaze is fusing. And on these grounds the judge held that there was a failure to demonstrate any patentable novelty in connecting two pieces of porcelain by fusing them instead of joining them by cement.