Ex Parte National Enameling and Stamping Company

Citations

• 201 U.S. 156
• 26 S. Ct. 404
• 50 L. Ed. 707
• 1906 U.S. LEXIS 1806

Syllabus

<p>Plaintiffs brought suit upon a single patent, in which there were twelve claims. The Circuit Court found that three of the claims were invalid and nine valid, of which five had been infringed, and referred it to a master to report the amount of damages and dismissed the bill as to the claims found invalid and not infringed. Defendants appealed from the decree and plaintiffs also filed cross appeal assigning as errors the rulings adverse to them. The Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the cross ap- • peal. Petition for mandamus to compel that court to take jurisdiction of the cross appeal denied and held, that:</p> <p>The decree was interlocutory and not final and in the Federal courts no appeal can as a general rule be taken except from a final decree.</p> <p>The appeal authorized by -§ 7 of the act of March 3, 1891, does not bring up the cause as a whóle; and, unless otherwise specially ordered, the case, except for hearing of the appeal from the interlocutory order, proceeds in the lower court as though no appeal had been taken until final .judgment.</p> <p>Cases in which a bill has been dismissed as to some of the defendants and a separable controversy as to others referred to a master for an accounting, and in which the dismissal has been treated as a final decree, have no application to a case of joint liability, or in which there is only a single defendant.</p>