DAIRY PROCESS

Shannon News, 18 December 1928, Page 4

DAIRY PROCESS

Technical details in the process of the manufacture of batter and cheese are being investigated at length in a patent action commenced in the Auckland Supreme Court, before Mr ustice Blair. The plaintiffs are Frederick Louis Armitage, bacteriologist, and Robert Burns, merchant (Mr Richmond and Mr Sexton), who. claim an injunction for infringement of patent against the Murray Deodoriser Company, of Hobson Street, dairy engineers (Mr A. H. Johnstone and Mr Park). Plaintiffs claim that Mr Armitage was granted letters of patent for a method of producing improved cream for butter-making . and improved milk for cheese-making, and that he was entitled to half interest in the invention. They allege that thu defendant company had infringed and intended to continue to infringe, this patent. They therefore seek an injunction restraining the company' from this infringement, an inquiry into the damages sustained and the delivery of all appliances made in infringement of the patent. The plaintiffs further allege that since May, 1925, the company has caused the firm of Hardleys, Limited, to manufacture a plant or maefeino known as the Murray deodoriser, and had sold it to the Waikato Valley. Dairy Company, thus infringing the patent. Details of this alleged infringement arc set out under nine headings. The statement of defence by the Murray deodoriser Company denies /tliat the company has infringed, the patent, and claims that the patent is not novel, and, as it embraces common general knowledge of the practice of the art of butter and eheese-nyiking, is therefore not a subject for of patent. 1 The defence further claims that “the said alleged invention is not useful, ’ ’ and sets up another defence that Mr Armitage acquiesced in the manufacture and sale of the apparatus in dispute and that the plaintiffs aro therefore estopped from "now claiming an infringement of patent.