In 1904, Sigmund Sternau, J.P. Steppe, and L. Strassberger, assignors to S. Sternau & Co., New York, were granted a United States patent on a percolator. Six others were granted to Charles Nelson, and assigned to S. Sternau & Co., in 1912 and 1913, for a percolator, the manufacture and sale of which were discontinued in 1915.
In 1905, a celebrated case was decided in Kansas City involving litigation between William E. Baker, of Baker & Co., Minneapolis, and the F.A. Duncombe Manufacturing Co., of St. Joseph, Mo., over Mr. Baker's patent rights in a machine to produce steel-cut coffee. The suit was brought in 1903, and Mr. Baker contended that his patent gave him the exclusive right to the "uniformity of granules by means of the sharply dressed mechanism" and by the use of a fan for blowing away the silver skins, produced by his machine; while the defendant said he obtained the same result (steel-cut coffee) by grading the granules through screens or sieves. The defense was that Mr. Baker's process was not a discovery; because, grinding coffee was as old as the world's knowledge, and winnowing the chaff was equally ancient. The lower court dismissed the bill, because the "patents sued upon are devoid of patentable invention"; and the United States Court of Appeals confirmed the decision.
In 1905, Frederick A. Cauchois, of New York, brought out his Private Estate coffee maker, a clever combination of the French drip and filter processes, employing a thin layer of Japanese paper as a filtering agent. The same year, Finley Acker, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States patent on a percolator employing two cylinders, perforated on the sides, with a sheet of percolator paper placed between them to act as a filtering medium.
In 1906, George Savage and J.W. Chapman, assignors to Manning, Bowman & Co. of Meriden, Conn., were granted a United States patent on a coffee percolator.
In 1906, Alonzo A. Warner, assignor to Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain, Conn., was granted a United States patent on a coffee percolator.
In 1906, H.D. Kelly, Kansas City, was granted a United States patent on the Kellum Automatic coffee urn, employing a coffee extractor in which ground coffee is continually agitated before percolation by a vacuum process. Sixteen patents followed.
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