Cleveland Punch & Shear Works Co. v. EW Bliss Co.

• Decision Date: 07 December 1944
• Docket Number: No. 9748-9751.,9748-9751.
• Parties: CLEVELAND PUNCH & SHEAR WORKS CO. v. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. SAME v. MARQUETTE TOOL & MFG. CO. SAME v. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. v. CLEVELAND PUNCH & SHEAR WORKS CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

145 F.2d 991 (1944)

CLEVELAND PUNCH & SHEAR WORKS CO. v. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. SAME v. MARQUETTE TOOL & MFG. CO. SAME v. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. E. W. BLISS CO. et al. v. CLEVELAND PUNCH & SHEAR WORKS CO.

Nos. 9748-9751.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

December 7, 1944.

Victor D. Borst, of New York City, for Cleveland Punch & Shear Works Co.

Albert R. Golrick, of Cleveland, Ohio (Horace B. Fay and Albert R. Golrick, both of Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief), for E. W. Bliss Co., Toledo Machine & Tool Co., Frederich J. Rode, and Marquette Tool Mfg. Co.

Before HICKS, SIMONS, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

SIMONS, Circuit Judge.

Since patents in all four cases relate to drawing presses for shaping large sheet metal structures such as the roofs, fenders, and body panels of automobiles, and since the patents are owned by the Bliss Company and its affiliates, and the alleged infringer is the same in each of the cases, economy of time and space will be served by disposing of them in a single opinion, although they were briefed and argued as separate cases and the single continuous record made below was separated for the purpose of appeal, with a stipulation, however, that the testimony and exhibits were to be interchangeably useable and applicable in all cases.

No. 9748

This case involves patent No. 1,918,784 to Frederich J. Rode for a sheet metal drawing press, issued July 18, 1933 upon an application filed April 11, 1932. No issue of infringement being raised by the defendant's answer and proofs, the controversy is limited to the validity of claims 2, 5, and 7 relied upon by the plaintiffs. Upon findings and conclusions of a special master, affirmed by the court, that the claims in suit were valid, the usual decree for injunction and accounting for damages was entered.

While the Rode patent is directed to a sheet metal drawing press, the claims in suit, of which claim 2, printed in the margin,¹ is sufficiently typical, relate more specifically to a gearing for the transmission of power appropriately controlled from a conventional source to a type of press well known in the art. Presses of the type described in the patent are driven by the kinetic energy stored in a motor-driven fly-wheel. Since the nature of the process involved in shaping large sheets of thin steel is such that the metal must be caused to flow to a considerable extent, and since the die mechanism carried by the ram or slide must be accurately driven and accurately registered with the lower die mechanism, the press must operate at a speed much slower than the speed of the flywheel. The usual practice had been to use a small gear on the power shaft meshing with a large "bull" gear on the crank shaft to secure desired speed reduction. In the case of four-point presses, such as in the patent described, which have two crank shafts each supporting two plungers so as to give a four-point drive to the slide, the usual expedient had been to mesh two bull gears, of equal size, so that the crank shafts would turn in opposite direction at equal speeds. A difficulty perceived in this arrangement resulted from the fact that one bull gear was both a driven and a driving gear, while the other was driven only. The driving gear was found to wear faster than the other, resulting eventually in the two crank shafts being sufficiently out of time to cause a slight tilting of the slide and thereby destroying the accuracy of the press. It was well understood that this unequal wear could be minimized by increasing the size of the bull gears, but such increase was subject to limitation by considerations of available space, and since the crank shafts of meshing gears must be separated by the diameter of the gears, no flexibility of design was permitted.

Rode claimed to have solved this difficulty by providing bull gears which are driven by smaller intermediate gears so that the bull gears need not mesh but may overlap. This arrangement permits the use of considerably larger bull gears without enlargement of the press, and permits of greater flexibility of design since the crank shafts need be separated by little more than the radius of the bull gears. This greatly minimizes, if it does not eliminate, inequality due to wear, because the inequality becomes negligible by reason of the size of the gears.

Rode attempted to patent his complete concept, but his original claims were rejected on the ground that the use of large gears to offset wear, was old in gearing. He then limited his application to a construction which eliminates idler shafts by mounting the intermediate gears loosely on the crank shafts, and claims so limited were allowed. For his precise arrangement of the gear train there is no complete anticipation in prior art. However, in presses made for the A. O. Smith Corporation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, and used for several years prior to Rode, unmeshed bull gears were driven by intermediate gears to avoid tilting of the slide and achieved a saving of space, at least in the fore and aft dimension, together with flexibility of design in mounting the crank shafts. The Smith press was, however, only a single end drive, with only one bull gear on each crank shaft, instead of two. It is admitted, however, that Rode was not the originator of the double end drive, and the question is therefore presented whether Rode demonstrates such advance over the Smith use as to denote invention, the advance being the elimination of idler shafts, which permits a saving in the height of press and some slight saving in its cost of construction.

It was old, however, to mount intermediate gears on the main shafts instead of on back shafts, for it appears in Wood patent No. 280,705, allowed July 3, 1883, for a cane mill. This may well be considered remote art, suggesting nothing to Rode. But in 1887 Essex, in patent No. 374,146, described fully the generic class of multiple gearing of which Rode is but one species. His invention consists, in its broadest features, of a driving gear wheel, a double gear wheel, or a series thereof carried loosely on the support with the driving gear wheel, the double gear wheels having large and small portions and a similar double gear wheel or series thereof on another support, the large portions of one series engaging with the small portions of the other series. He explained that the starting and ending gears can both be fastened to their respective shafts, or one can be fastened and the other loose, or both can be loose, in which case the intermediate double gears may, if desired, be fixed to their shafts. The Essex invention was not limited in applicability to any specific type of operative apparatus, but was addressed generally to the machine arts disclosing an improved form of mechanism for converting motion equally available where initial speed in transmission is to be multiplied or reduced, as circumstances may require.

Essex is indubitably prior art. Substantially it covers the whole field of transmission by means of multiple gears in controlling initial speed derived from any power source. The defendant's expert gave complete demonstration that multiple gears may be arranged in a train in a myriad of forms from which appropriate selection may be made for any required purpose. Giving consideration to the modern development in the machine arts and the schooling of mechanics engaged therein, and giving consideration also to the more exacting tests of invention applied by the Supreme Court in its latest decisions, it is impossible for us to perceive that Rode exercised the inventive faculty or accomplished what was beyond the expected skill of the highly trained modern mechanic.

The generalization that it is not permissible to aggregate several old devices to invalidate a patent originally announced in Topliff v. Topliff, 145 U.S. 156, 12 S.Ct. 825, 36 L.Ed. 658, and not infrequently guiding us to decision, Williams Mfg. Co. v. United States Shoe Machinery Corp., 6 Cir., 121 F.2d 273, affirmed, 316 U.S. 364, 62 S.Ct. 1179, 86 L.Ed. 1537, is, of course, not applicable where the state of the art at the time of disclosure, is such as to make combination obvious. It has often been said in this court that "however meritorious may be the inventor's thought in terms of result, unless the means adopted in attaining such result are novel and denote invention, either separately or in combination, he may not have a valid patent, for we are dealing with a machine and not a method." U. S. Gypsum Co. v. Consolidated Expanded Metal Co., 6 Cir., 130 F. 2d 888, 891; Reo Motor Car Co. v. Gear Grinding Machine Co., 6 Cir., 42 F.2d 965, 968. It has also been pointed out that the coupling of a motor that will run any kind of a machine, to a machine that will run with any kind of a motor, is not invention. Since most machines require translation of movement from the source of power to the operative mechanism by means of gearing, it must also follow that the coupling of an old motor to a conventional apparatus by means of a known or obvious expedient for translation of movement, is likewise not invention. Once it is understood that the wheels of a gear train may be arranged in any one of many combinations to multiply or reduce speed, with infinite variations in size and succession, it cannot be that every new arrangement of gears, not before precisely disclosed, merits the granting of another monopoly. Cf. Univis Corp. v. Rips, 6 Cir., 104 F.2d 749, 752.

We undertake no separate discussion of the argument that the Rode patent deals with an exhausted combination, for that is but another way of saying that the patent fails to disclose an advance in the art beyond the expected skill of the mechanic. Nor in view of the conclusion reached is it necessary for us to consider the rule of Bassick Mfg. Co. v. R. M. Hollingshead, 298 U.S. 415, 56 S.Ct. 787, 80 L.Ed. 1251, and Lincoln Engineering Co. v. Stewart-Warner...