Joseph P. Woodbury had two planer patents. His first patent dates to 1849, during the time of the Woodworth planer-patent monopoly, and was for a design that used a graduated series of fixed knives. Machines of this design only worked on dry, straight-grained, defect-free lumber, but on the right stock it produced excellent results. Still, its greatest virtue was that it withstood the legal challenges from the Woodworth syndicate.

One year before, in 1848, Woodbury had applied for another planer patent, relating to the use of pressure bars, but it was rejected the following year. His lawyer withdrew his application in 1852, but Woodbury re-applied in 1873, and based on a then-recent Supreme Court decision, obtained the patent even though pressure bars had by then been in use for many years. Somewhere during this process, Woodbury died and his heirs aggressively used the patent, under the name of the Woodbury Patent Planing-Machine Co., to threaten anyone using a planer with a pressure-bar, which is to say almost anyone using a planer. They demanded from $100 to $300 per machine per year, depending on the size of the machine. It appears that they would settle for considerably less, provided the payer signed an agreement to pay in perpetuity.

J. A. Fay & Co. termed the Woodbury patent "a swindle and a fraud, and was obtained by trickery in the face of the fact that the device has been in public use for more than thirty years." A number of other planer manufacturers joined the Fay company in indemnifying their customers against the Woodbury patent and demanding that the Woodbury company sue someone so that the courts could decide the case. In January of 1879, the case of Woodbury Patent Planing-Machine Co. v. Keith was decided in the Massachusetts Circuit Court, which invalidated Woodbury's 1873 patent: "I believe him to have been an original and meritorious inventor, but of a change which was not difficult to make or to invent, and of which, as it turns out, he was not the first inventor." This was the final nail in the coffin of the Woodbury Patent Planing-Machine Co.

Information Sources

• 1853 ad and 1857 mention in Scientific American.
• Article in 1875 Manufacturer & Builder.
• The decision of Woodbury Patent Planing-Machine Co. v. Keith is worth reading and gives more detail on the unusual history of the 1873 patent.
• See also our history of Enos G. Allen, a man who, in his later life, was involved in the Woodbury Patent Planing-Machine Co.
• Canadian patent records show a version of Woodbury's patent. The Canadian patent and its extensions were assigned to "Woodbury Patent Planing Machine Co. of Canada", based in Montreal.