Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Barnard & Leas Manufacturing Co. (commonly "Barnard & Leas Mfg. Co.") was a Moline, Illinois manufacturer of flour-milling and grain-handling machinery. It was established in 1860 and incorporated in 1872 with authorized capital of $120,000, and was privately held and closely controlled by founder Heman A. Barnard (president) and J. Silas Leas (vice president). No current corporate existence, parent, or public listing could be verified; this is a historical late-19th/early-20th-century manufacturer rather than an active company. Contemporaneous sources give differing size figures: a Rock Island County business directory listed about 60 employees, while an 1889 Moline civic survey reported roughly 200 employees and annual business approaching $500,000.
Its product lines included Victor smutters, Victor brush-scourers, Barnard's dustless wheat separators, Eureka flour-packers, wheat grinders, middlings purifiers, giant corn-shellers, dustless corn cleaners, plan sifters, reels, rollers, and purifiers. The firm also supplied complete outfits for flour mills, hominy mills, and roller-process corn mills, and sold through agents in London and other foreign markets.
Litigation posture. Barnard & Leas was an operating company on the receiving end of patent litigation, not an assertion entity: the tracked data show 0 cases as plaintiff and 1 as defendant. It had no plaintiff-side patent-assertion activity, and the single tracked matter places it as the accused infringer.
Notable case. Consolidated Roller-Mill Co. v. Barnard & Leas Manuf'g Co., an equity bill in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charged infringement of four roller-mill patents (Gray 222,895; Gray 238,677; Odell reissue 10,139; Birkholz 269,623). The circuit court dismissed the bill on July 14, 1890 (43 F. 527), and the Supreme Court affirmed in The Roller Mill Patent, 156 U.S. 261 (1895), holding one Gray patent not infringed and another void for want of novelty. Contemporary press described Consolidated Roller-Mill as a vehicle formed by leading mill manufacturers that pooled patents and sued numerous millers and manufacturers — making this an early example of a pooled-portfolio campaign against an operating rival.
Patent infringement suit. Asserted patents were Gray 222,895, Gray 238,677, Odell reissue 10,139, and Birkholz 269,628. Bill dismissed for want of equity; patents held anticipated/void and no infringement. US 265,927 was not named among the patents sued on.