Plaintiff
1 case as plaintiff.
Note on scope: The only tracked case is a U.S. Supreme Court appeal decided in 1895, so this profile describes a historical 19th-century company rather than a current corporate entity. Modern data points (ticker, market cap, employee count, revenue band) are not applicable, and I could not verify a precise headquarters, founding year, or ownership structure from public sources.
Company overview. Consolidated Roller-Mill Company (also reported as "Consolidated Rolling-Mill Co." and docketed as "The Consolidated Roller Mill Company") was a U.S. manufacturer of roller grinding mills during the 1880s–1890s. No public filing, incorporation record, or corporate-history source giving its headquarters, founding date, or ownership status surfaced in searches; the only firm corporate detail is procedural — its infringement suit was litigated in the Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, indicating an Illinois/Chicago-area base, before reaching the Supreme Court.
Products / operations. The company built roller mills — the roller-based grinding machinery that displaced millstones in flour milling in the late 19th century. Its product technology was reflected in the patents it asserted: roll-adjustment mechanisms for setting mill rolls vertically and horizontally and maintaining parallelism, spring-loaded roll assemblies that yield to hard foreign objects, and belt-driven (rather than gear-driven) roll trains. These derived from patents by William D. Gray (Nos. 222,895; 228,525; 238,677), U. H. Odell (reissue No. 10,139), and Hans Birkholz (No. 269,623).
Patent-litigation posture. This was an operating manufacturer enforcing its own patent portfolio one-way, not an NPE. The structured data shows 1 plaintiff case and 0 defendant cases, and contemporaneous litigation confirms that pattern: the company repeatedly sued rival mill makers rather than being sued. It is best characterized as a manufacturer-licensor asserting Gray-family roller-mill patents.
Notable cases. Consolidated Roller-Mill Co. v. Barnard & Leas Manuf'g Co., 156 U.S. 261 (1895) — styled "The Roller Mill Patent," argued Nov. 12, 1894, decided Feb. 4, 1895 — was a bill in equity against Moline, Illinois mill maker Barnard & Leas. The Court held the Gray '895 patent not infringed and the Gray '677 patent void for want of novelty. A companion case, Consolidated Roller-Mill Co. v. Walker, 138 U.S. 124 (1891), likewise saw the Gray belt-drive claim invalidated.
Supreme Court appeal from the Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois in the roller-mill patent equity suit. The Court affirmed the dismissal and held US 238,677 void for want of novelty as to claims 2 and 3, while companion patent US 222,895 was not infringed.