Raleigh, Sept. 11—The suit filed against the R.G. Lassiter Construction company in Federal court here by the Macon Concrete Roller company alleging infringement of patent rights by the big North Carolina road-building concern is going to start an argument.
Counsel James H. Pou, who filed the complaint of the Macon company alleging irreparable injury to the plaintiff and great gains to the defendant from the use in Vance county and elsewhere of the rolling device, points out the decision of the United States supreme court last Friday in a similar case against the Brooks Calloway company of Georgia. It is also stated that this suit is merely first of a number against contractors doing road work in North Carolina.
In all probability all of the contractors building concrete roads under the direction of the state highway commission will e sued or settle, if the suit against Bob Lassiter sets a satisfactory precedent. It is understood here that all of the concrete contractors are rolling their roads, and it is said by some who should know what they are talking about that the patent in possession of the Macon folks covers well-nigh all possible rolling of concrete of a highway.
The fight, it seems, is not to be conducted so much against the patent rights of the Macon Concrete Rollar company as in dispute of its right to make an allegedly unreasonable charge for the idea.
No answer has as yet been filed, but there has been considerable comment in road-making quarters both before and after the filing of the complaint. The state highway omission is not made a party to the suit—a state is a trifle harder to sue than a contractor however hard that contractor of the stuff that fills has contract with may be—but there is no secret that its sympathies are with the contractors.
There is a report going the rounds to the effect that the Macon company was offered a “reasonable” price for the use of its patented device but that it demanded $200 for a contrivance costing $12. That was, in the opinion of the contractors—who may have been encouraged by state road-builders—too doggoned much.
For after all a roller does nothing but roll. A rolling pin, for instance, rolls bread and some of the opposition to paying a high tariff on concrete rollers assert that there is about as much sense and good public policy in patenting the idea of rolling concrete as the manner of rolling out dough.
The letters patent doubtless have been infringed upon; but it was done deliberately and it now remains to see what is going to happen.
J.M. Templeton Jr. to Appeal Conviction
Wake was deprived of—or spared, depending upon the viewpoint—the airing of the juiciest row of the late and by some lamented primary in superior court today when H.G. Gulley of Colonel Watts’ office and for some years one of the most active field agents of the Democratic Party in these parts, entered a plea of nolo contendere and paid the costs in an appeal from a Cary magistrate, who fined him for a disturbance at the polls on the day of the second primary. The disturbance consisted of a little heart-to-heart talk Gulley made to the folk gathered about the polls on the subject of his opponents. He had bawled out J.M. Templeton Jr., a former member of the General Assembly, and got around to Templeton’s Republican brother, Alf, who resides in Raleigh. Alf undertook to show his displeasure by “climbing” the speaker.
At the magistrate’s trial Templeton paid his fine and its costs. Gulley appealed, and there was every indication that if the case came to trial in the higher court there would be a lot of personalities indulged in. The principals were just about sore enough not to care, but the party leaders didn’t like the idea one little bit,--been too much said about the aforesaid primary that wasn’t complimentary already,--so they evidently labored with Gulley to some effect.
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From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sept. 12, 1922. Nolo contendere means no contest. The defendant doesn’t say that he’s guilty but he accepts the punishment.
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