Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. PRECISE MFG. CORPORATION

• Decision Date: 06 August 1925
• Parties: WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & MFG. CO. et al. v. PRECISE MFG. CORPORATION. SAME v. CHAS. A. BRANSTON, Inc.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

10 F.2d 517 (1925)

WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & MFG. CO. et al. v. PRECISE MFG. CORPORATION.

SAME v. CHAS. A. BRANSTON, Inc.

District Court, W. D. New York.

August 6, 1925.

Charles Neave and Stephen H. Philbin, both of New York City, for plaintiffs.

Darby & Darby, of New York City (Samuel Darby, Jr., of New York City, and John S. Powers, of Buffalo, N. Y., of counsel), for defendants.

HAZEL, District Judge.

It is unnecessary to discuss the technical aspects of these cases at length, as it appears that both the Fessenden patents in issue for heterodyne apparatus and method inventions have at various times been sustained in this circuit and accorded a broad scope of equivalents (Kintner v. Atlantic Com. Co. D. C. 241 F. 956; International Signal Co. v. Vreeland Apparatus Co. C. C. A. 278 F. 468); and so also the Armstrong patent in suit for regenerative invention (Armstrong & Westinghouse Co., etc., v. De Forest D. C. 279 F. 445 (affirmed C. C. A. 280 F. 584). These decisions were followed and applied in a number of adjudications in the Southern district of New York, on applications for preliminary injunctions in other suits, and the application in each instance was allowed by different District Court judges; they substantially holding that the sale of unassembled parts, separately or collectively, to accomplish the objects of said patents, constituted acts of contributory infringement, and, moreover, that it makes no difference that the buyer or user put the various parts together to obtain the heterodyne or superheterodyne effect. Judge Learned Hand so ruled in Westinghouse, etc., v. Independent Co. (D. C.) 300 F. 748, and afterwards in Westinghouse, etc., v. Taub (D. C.) 4 F.(2d) 605, Judge Knox substantially ruled that the use of instrumentalities by which the method of heterodyning, or so-called beat frequency (as distinguished from ordinary receiving circuits) is obtained for circuit detection or amplification, so as to utilize the telephone receivers in transmission of sound waves, constituted infringement by the defendant, in the case before him, of the Fessenden and Armstrong patents, and he enjoined the sale of parts ready for assemblage, though admittedly such parts were old in the art, to be used to constitute a superheterodyne radio receiving set of the type described in the patents in suit. In Westinghouse, etc., v. Experimenter's Bureau, Inc. (no written opinion), Judge Goddard also enjoined the defendant from selling superheterodyne radio receiving sets or kits of parts, particularly oscillator coils and radio frequency transformers and tune couplers, which, he said, were infringements or contributory infringements of the patents in suit. In all of the decisions granting preliminary injunctions the court followed the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals of this circuit, and such an array of authority on a question similar to that presented in this case is entitled to persuasive weight, without a critical examination that would be given if such authority did not exist.

In the case at bar defendants do not question the validity of the Fessenden patents in suit, and the single question in the Precise Manufacturing Corporation Case is whether the sale by it of transformers infringes the patents,...