General Electric Co. v. WABASH APPLIANCE CORPORATION
| Decision Date | 16 January 1937 |
| Docket Number | No. 7723.,7723. |
| Citation | 17 F. Supp. 901 |
| Parties | GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. WABASH APPLIANCE CORPORATION et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
Howson & Howson, of New York City (Hubert Howson, Merrell E. Clark, Alexander C. Neave, and John H. Anderson, all of New York City, of counsel), for plaintiff.
Darby & Darby, of New York City (Samuel E. Darby, Jr., and Paul Kolisch, both of New York City, of counsel), for defendants.
This is a suit for infringement of the Pacz patent No. 1,410,499, filed February 20, 1917, and issued March 21, 1922.
The patent contains claims covering a process and a product. However, only product claims 25, 26, and 27 are here in suit.
These three claims cover an incandescent lamp filament and read as follows:
The plaintiff contends that the filament covered by these claims represents an important advance in the art. The plaintiff and its licensees have undoubtedly sold billions of incandescent lamps embodying that filament. The defendants, Wabash Appliance Corporation, Abe Adler, and Abe Parker, the latter two being the sole stockholders and officers of the corporate defendant, are not licensed under the Pacz patent.
The plaintiff charges the defendants with infringement, in that the claim is made that the defendants make and sell electric incandescent lamps containing filaments which are in fact Pacz filaments of the claims in suit.
The history of the incandescent lamp began about fifty years ago, when Edison brought out the first commercial lamp that was successful. The Edison lamp contained a carbon filament and remained the standard of the industry until the advent of tungsten as a filamentary material.
Tungsten was disclosed in 1906 by the invention of Just and Hanaman. These tungsten filaments were of the squirted or pressed type, tungsten powder being mixed with a binding material in a plastic mass and then squirted under pressure through a die to a fine thread. It was then dried and sintered to form a filament of pure tungsten. Loops of this filament were then assembled on supports inside a glass bulb to form an incandescent filament. Plaintiff's Exhibit 8. This squirted tungsten filament was an improvement over the carbon filament but, because this filament was a little brittle and weak, it could not be made into long lengths or of accurate gauge.
While this tungsten filament was an improvement over the carbon lamp of Edison it, nevertheless, presented a problem known as "offsetting," which is the bodily shifting of a portion of the filament from an adjacent portion during the burning of the filament. These early tungsten filaments consisted of comparatively large crystals, many of which were large enough to extend clear across the filament, but they shifted. Because of the bodily shifting of portions of the filament (Plaintiff's Exhibit 12), the available cross sectional area of the filament for carrying electric current was reduced at the point of the "offsetting." The filament then became overheated and burned out.
The next step in the history of the filament was the Coolidge patent 1,082,933. His method of making the drawn tungsten filament included means for preventing "offsetting." Since "offsetting" was known to occur when, as Coolidge put it Plaintiff's Exhibit 2), the crystals became "so large as to extend across the entire section of the filament," Coolidge made provision (by the addition of certain chemical materials at an early stage of his process) for arresting crystal growth in the final filament. His theory was the maintenance of a small crystal structure. He did not have large crystals so as to extend the entire section of the filament. As a result of his method his filament was a non-offsetting filament.
The Coolidge method was, of course, a great improvement over the weak squirted filament. Its grains were so small and numerous that none extended all the way across the filament, which prevented slipping and in turn this made a non-offsetting filament. However, there was another serious defect characteristice of a tungsten filament. This was the defect of "sagging."
The Coolidge patent did not take care of the problem of "sagging." The filament in a lamp is not stiff enough to support itself and consequently must be strung between supports. The Coolidge filament would sag between its supports after use for some time.
"Sagging" deformed the filament from the position it was supposed to maintain and it would also reduce the efficiency of the lamp in time, causing its failure. This was a definite problem in the art. It was not solved by Coolidge. A large number of supports were used as a remedy, but this did not eliminate "sagging."
The problem presented to Pacz was to make a practical filament that would neither "offset" nor "sag." Pacz knew, like the others in the art, if the grains were allowed to grow the filament would "offset." If grain growth were prevented, like the Coolidge method, the filament would not "offset" but would "sag." The art taught one to avoid large grains since that would allow "offsetting." The problem remained unsolved until Pacz made the invention of the patent in suit.
Until the advent of this Pacz filament, the state of the art, undoubtedly, was such that experiments were being made in order to produce a filament that would not "sag."
The defendants have cited many patents as a defense to the one in suit and make a further claim that the Pacz patent did not improve the art existing at the time of the granting of his patent. These patents cited by the defendants can readily be distinguished.
To determine whether the insoluble problem was in fact solved by Pacz can easily be determined. Pacz made a multicrystal filament having grains of large size to prevent "sagging" and of such contour that, even though the boundary between grains extended all the way across the filament, no slippage or "offsetting" occurred. Pacz was able to control the contour or shape of the grains so that they did not slip. He had had 217 failures and was finally successful on his 218th attempt. For that reason the filament is frequently referred to by number 218. This 218 filament, like the Coolidge filament, was drawn tungsten and was made in much the same way as that described by Coolidge. The difference between the Pacz filament and the Coolidge filament was that Coolidge overcame "offsetting" by adding small amounts of certain chemical materials at an early stage of the process which insured the maintenance of small grains in the final filament, while Pacz employed different chemical materials which produced the opposite effect of promoting in the final filament the growth of large grains of such contour that not only did it prevent "offsetting," as in the Coolidge filament, but solved the problem of "sagging."
The theory of Pacz was directly contrary to the prior teachings. The Pacz filament never produced a crystal boundary joining large crystals which were either disposed in the right position to "offset" or which were smooth, easily permitting the movement of one crystal away from the other. He produced large crystals not late in the burning life of the lamp but very early, obtaining a coarse-grained filament which did not "offset" and, since the filament was coarse-grained, it did not "sag."
As the structure of the filament under the Pacz method is comparatively coarse-grained, this was the reason given by Pacz why the filament did not "sag." However, that would mean to the art that the filament would "offset" because it was common knowledge in the art that where grain boundaries, large enough to extend across the filament, were produced, there would be bound to be slippage. Under the Pacz patent it is claimed that a particular kind of coarse-grained filament is produced which does not "offset." These coarse-grained boundaries are of such a nature that they prevent slipping action. The contour of these grains by the method used by Pacz is a very important element. Pacz found that he produced such a filament by the method disclosed in his patent in which a material intimately associated with the tungsten particles has an effect on the shape and size of the tungsten grains. The material which Pacz used for producing the desired result was an alkali silicate.
It is conceded by the plaintiff that no one knows even at the present time just why the Pacz process should make grains of such a size that the filament will not "sag" and of such a shape that the grains will not slip and produce "offsetting." Plaintiff's Brief, p. 11.
The claims now in suit were held valid by the Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, Anraku v. General Electric Co., 80 F.(2d) 958, which affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, 10 F. Supp. 935, in the case of General Electric Co. v. Anraku. A petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court was denied. 298 U.S. 678, 56 S.Ct. 942,...
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General Electric Co v. Wabash Appliance Corporation
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