Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation v. Staudt, 36.

• Decision Date: 08 January 1942
• Docket Number: No. 36.,36.
• Citation: 124 F.2d 672
• Parties: ADDRESSOGRAPH-MULTIGRAPH CORPORATION v. STAUDT et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

124 F.2d 672 (1942)

ADDRESSOGRAPH-MULTIGRAPH CORPORATION v. STAUDT et al.

No. 36.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

January 8, 1942.

Albert H. Bates, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Robert W. Byerly, of New York City, for appellant.

Philip S. McLean and Lester M. Friedman, both of New York City, for appellees.

Before SWAN, CHASE, and FRANK, Circuit Judges.

CHASE, Circuit Judge.

This suit in equity was brought by the plaintiff in the District Court for the Southern District of New York charging the defendants, as co-partners in business under the trade name of Address-O-Plate Company, with contributory infringement of claims 1, 3, 13 and 14 of United States Patent No. 2,030,865 which was granted to plaintiff's predecessor as the assignee of Walter T. Gollwitzer on Jan. 18, 1936 for an address plate. The District Court construed the claims so narrowly that what the defendants have done could not be contributory infringement if that construction of the claims is correct. They have made and sold what will hereinafter be described and called printing plates having notches in either end which they knew made them fit the plaintiff's patented frame and which they knew would be used in such frames. The plaintiff has appealed. We shall first consider whether the claims were properly construed for, if they were, that ends the matter.

An address plate to which the patent relates consists of two principal parts. One of them is a flat rectangular piece of metal which is the printing plate that will be called the plate to distinguish it from what will be called the frame. That is a larger metal piece having overhanging retaining ledges beneath which the plate may be slid and spring stops at each end which hold the plate in position. The plate and frame so put together are run through an addressing machine to print whatever is on the plate. Such printing differs from what may be called ordinary printing in that there is a complete change of type after each impression instead of repeated printing with the same type.

As the specifications state, "The invention relates to such mutual formation of the frame and the printing plate as will enable the very ready installation or removal of the printing plate from the frame, but will result in the effective holding of the printing plate when in place." The difficulty grew mostly out of the fact that the printing plate had to be both securely and detachably held to the frame by means of small metal parts fashioned from the thin metal of the frame so that it would stay in place while running through the machine and yet be readily removable to make room for putting another plate into the frame before it went through the machine again.

For a number of years before the patent, such address plates and frames were in wide use. The spring-held stops on the frame which prevented endwise movement of the plate after it was in position and which had to be depressed before the plate could be removed were at first merely little humps pressed up from a partially cut-out portion of the frame which acted as a spring. The plate, when in position, had such a spring-held hump abutting either end. The operator was expected to depress this hump below, or at least even with, the under surface of the plate to permit the plate to slide out and to do that by pressing upon it with a finger or thumb nail. Sometimes the spring tension was too great to permit that to be easily done and then an operator would use the end of something like a nail file. That might depress the spring so far that it would not return to place and might even cause a bend in the flat spring. When either of these things happened, the frame would no longer hold the plate satisfactorily and if it did not when used in the addressing machine would be apt to cause it to jam. This particular trouble was well taken care of by what is called an oldstyle frame the plaintiff made which is shown in the record as defendants' exhibit C. It is prior art and has at least two important improvements over what has been called the first construction. The raised hump on the spring end became a little extrusion pushed out at or near the top of a bent-up portion of the spring which served to hold the moveable, bent end of the spring in a plane parallel with the main portion of it but higher by slightly more than the width of the address plate; and underneath this moveable raised end of the spring was a ledge in the frame which allowed the spring to be depressed only about as low as needed to let the plate slide in or out. What has just been called the bent up portion was the entire width of the spring at that point bent substantially at right angles both at the bottom and the top of what will now be called the one strut.

The specifications of the patent show a modification of the spring structure of defendants' exhibit C by making cuts in the strut of the spring to form three inclined struts, one on either outer side and one in the middle, which carry the moveable end portion of the spring in a plane parallel to that of the main portion and just enough higher to permit the end of the plate when inserted in the frame to coact with the cut-out edges of the end portion of the spring on either side of the middle strut. And so it might be said that the hump was replaced by cut-out edges in the raised end portion of the spring that will now be called the platform. To give sufficient rigidity to such a platform...