THE LEGAL ELITE JOIN THE FIGHT: LINCOLN AND HIS FUTURE CABINET TAKE SIDES ON THE MCCORMICK REAPER CASE
While sales of McCormick’s reaper were initially slow, by 1854 it was clear that the reaper was a viable alternative to the scythe. It was also the year when the American public bought in to Singer’s sewing machine. Between the two, they created a buzz of economic change in America. With all the fanfare surrounding the litigation involving the revolver, vulcanized rubber, and now the sewing machine, McCormick must have understood that success meant not only competition, but also inevitable patent litigation.
No longer was Hussey McCormick’s main threat. Dozens of other reaper models now flooded the market. The brilliant marketing strategies of the past—the credit buying, the reaping competitions—none of that was enough to keep ahead. Like his peers, McCormick knew he had to turn to his patents. And he entered the litigation fray by suing William Seymour. He picked an easy fight, taking on a lightweight, a common strategy when enforcing patents against a industry full with infringers.
To argue the case, McCormick engaged one of the country’s most prominent trial lawyers, William H. Seward, Lincoln’s future Secretary of State, who was stabbed several times in the head and throat on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. Originally a general lawyer, Seward got hooked on patent cases, eventually encountering the likes of Daniel Webster. By the time of his engagement with McCormick, Seward was a seasoned patent litigator.
On October 24, 1854, Seward argued the case against Seymour in the Circuit Court in Albany, New York. He gave a stirring oration about how McCormick’s reaper, harvesting grain at an acre an hour, turned the biblical verse “cursed be the ground for thy sake” into a blessing by eliminating the need for both the sickle and “the sweat of thy face.” Seward continued by explaining the specific features that made McCormick’s reaper so successful, and how these were the aspects of McCormick’s patent that Seymour was infringing. Seward’s arguments were successful, and McCormick was awarded $7,750 in damages.
But McCormick’s foray in the world of patent litigation was just beginning. McCormick had more on his mind than Seymour, or even Obed Hussey. More formidable entrants were flooding into this promising new industry. On the marketing side, McCormick kept the pressure on with his reaping contests, hoping to beat his competitors on the strength of his reaper alone. But with so many competitive reapers, his luck began to turn.
Before, McCormick had toted his competitive edge in reaper contests, winning nearly all of them by large margins. But that changed during a reaper contest held on Wednesday, July 5, 1854, where McCormick’s reaper was outflanked by one from John H. Manny of Rockford, Illinois. As reported by the New York Times, the competition included reapers from Manny, McCormick, Ketchum, Allen, and Atkins. Using hooded horses, the machines were run through high grasses, each hoping to cut the most. Manny emerged as the clear winner and was praised by the Times, who concluded their piece by stating that “The farmers are fast gathering their crops, and I do not know what they would do without mowers and reapers.”
McCormick’s ire with Manny continued to brew. While Manny’s reaper handily won the contest, McCormick felt it did so only because it incorporated features covered by his patents. When Manny again beat McCormick in a contest at the Paris Exposition of 1855, McCormick had had enough and made Manny his prime target.
Fortunately, by 1856 McCormick was selling reapers at a rate of 4,000 reapers a year, and he now had the resources to take on Manny in the courtroom. The ensuing battle would last three years, including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Made popular by Abraham Lincoln’s participation, this case against Manny made the history books not necessarily for the impact of the reaper patents on the grain industry, but for introducing Lincoln to two key members of his future cabinet, Edwin Stanton and William Seward. Often noted by historians, Lincoln’s fee—which turned out to be largely unearned—enabled him to continue his debates with Stephen Douglas, propelling him to become the leading candidate for the Republican Party.
McCormick, as was his style, spared no expense in enforcing his patents. He wanted to teach his competitors a lesson. To lead his fight, he engaged Edward Dickerson, the same patent attorney who handled previous cases for both Colt and Goodyear. To further bolster his chances, McCormick also re-engaged William Seward, who had argued the same patent two years before in New York, and now added former Senator Reverdy Johnson, the man who a year later would represent the slave-owning defendant in the Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford. Although heavily in debt, Manny hired a seasoned patent attorney, George Harding of Philadelphia, and his partner, Edwin Stanton. Manny’s team also utilized the talents of other notables, including Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Peter H. Watson, and sitting Congressman H. Winter Davis. The legal talent involved in a single patent case has yet to find its equal.
In his complaint, McCormick sought an injunction plus damages of $400,000. Initially, the case was to be tried in Springfield, Illinois, by Judge Drummond of the Northern District of Illinois. Watson, lead attorney for Manny, needed local counsel in Illinois so he retained Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was well aware of the case and enthusiastically accepted. Watson paid Lincoln a $500 advance and, as was his custom, Lincoln immersed himself in the case, visiting the Manny facility in Rockford and preparing the case for trial.
Much to Lincoln’s dismay, the case was transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio. Lincoln wrote to Watson to finalize the details for trial but received no reply. As trial approached, Lincoln continued his preparations, still waiting for word from Watson. None came, mostly because Stanton, Harding, and Watson didn’t need, or want, Lincoln’s assistance now that the trial had been transferred to Ohio.
With trial looming and no word from Manny’s legal team, Lincoln left for Cincinnati. Stanton coldly greeted him, later referring to him as a long-armed baboon who dressed like a creature adorned in a stained suit. Lincoln was shunned until trial, being denied invitations to evening receptions and strategy planning sessions. His carefully prepared brief was never touched by Stanton. Later, Dickerson would report that Lincoln’s treatment was nothing short of humiliation and mortification.
Ever the student, Lincoln decided to attend the trial as a spectator on his own dime. He quietly sat in a back seat, taking careful notes, awestruck with Stanton’s arguments, which even the judge acknowledged as of “surpassing ability and clearness of demonstration.” It was this speech that would later convince Lincoln to replace his original selection for Secretary of War with Stanton.
What many do not realize about the Manny case is that it did not involve McCormick’s original patent, which had by this point expired and, according to the court, “belong[ed] to the public.” Rather, the case involved two improvement patents that McCormick filed in 1845 and 1853. Of these patents, only three claims were asserted. These were to very specific improvements, such as the position of the raker. The problem with McCormick was that he treated these improvement patents as if they covered every reaper, choosing to ignore the fact that his first patent—which did cover a broad spectrum of reapers—had expired. In so doing, McCormick was among the first to use a corporate patent portfolio to browbeat his competition into submission.
The entirety of Manny’s defense was that his reaper didn’t infringe. The decision as to infringement was an easy one for the judge. Because patent models were still required, Manny’s attorneys used McCormick’s model to aptly demonstrate what specific features McCormick claimed as his invention and how these differed from what Manny employed. A simple inspection showed that “the raker on Manny’s machines does not require the same elements of combination that were essential in McCormick’s invention.” In other words, Manny’s reaper simply did not infringe McCormick’s patents.
McCormick’s lawyers raised every tactic imaginable, even conjuring up an argument commonly used today to prove infringement. McCormick’s attorneys argued that Manny’s design was an equivalent to McCormick’s—the counterpart to today’s doctrine of equivalents, a doctrine where a patent holder can claim infringement when the infringer avoids the literal language of the patent claim but still sells a device or practices a process that only slightly differs from the claim (referred to as an “equivalent”). As support for this position, McCormick’s attorneys pointed to the language in the claims that included the phrase, “or the equivalent therefor.”
But in the 1850s, there was no such thing as the doctrine of equivalents, even if the patent claimed to cover equivalents. It was no surprise that the court refused to entertain this argument, saying the claim does not extend “to any improvements which are not substantially the same as those described, and which do not involve the same principle.” In other words, Judge McLean refused to find infringement unless Manny’s reaper was the same as that claimed in McCormick’s patent. When the arguments were finished, Judge McLean held that Manny’s reaper did not infringe.
In comparison with today’s patent litigation, the case was remarkable for what it did not include. Today, it would be unthinkable for Manny not to argue the invalidity of McCormick’s patents based on the existence of previous reaper designs. With the ability for today’s lawyers to combine any number of prior art references to argue that claims are obvious, any number of invalidity arguments can be raised, escalating the cost of patent litigation by orders of magnitude. But for Manny, there was no discussion about whether McCormick’s patent claims were obvious. There was no rhetoric about how any old mechanic could have come up with the reaper by combining known parts from other machines. It was a simple case: McCormick’s patent was valid, but Manny’s device was different and didn’t infringe. From start to finish, the case took less than a year.
But what was the price tag? How much did it cost to hire the most famous legal minds in American history? When Lincoln returned, Watson sent him a $2,000 payment. Honest Abe returned the money, telling Watson that he hadn’t earned his fee. But when Watson sent it a second time, Lincoln accepted it, splitting the profit with his law partner, Herndon. Stanton, the silver-tongued lawyer who won his client’s case, was reportedly paid $10,000, still less than the $15,000 that Goodyear paid Daniel Webster. Although this amount was thought to be outlandishly expensive and taxing on the court system, when compared to today’s patent litigation, the fees were relatively benign. Manny, heavily in debt, was still able to hire the best lawyers in the country without bankrupting himself. With reapers selling at $100 a piece, the cost of the trial was paid off by the sale of 200 reapers.
The adverse judgment didn’t deter McCormick. He appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which took two years to render its decision. The justices agreed with the trial court on all counts, and Manny’s victory was confirmed.