Air Device v. Air Factors

• Citation: 210 F.2d 481
• Decision Date: 24 March 1954
• Docket Number: No. 12921.,12921.
• Parties: AIR DEVICES, Inc. v. AIR FACTORS, Inc. et al.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

210 F.2d 481 (1954)

AIR DEVICES, Inc. v. AIR FACTORS, Inc. et al.

No. 12921.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

February 15, 1954.

Rehearing Denied March 24, 1954.

Lyon & Lyon, Reginald E. Caughey, Los Angeles, Cal., James C. Ledbetter, New York City, for appellant.

C. A. Miketta, W. W. Glenny, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellees.

Before STEPHENS, HEALY and POPE, Circuit Judges.

POPE, Circuit Judge.

The former opinion, given prior to rehearing herein, is withdrawn, and this one filed in its stead. This is an appeal from a judgment in an action for infringement of Harrigan Patent 2,240,617, issued May 6, 1941. The trial court D.C., 94 F.Supp. 819, held that the claims in issue, 1, 2 and 5, were not infringed. It held that the patent was valid if limited to the specific construction described in the patent.

The patent discloses a device for introducing air into a room, called an "air distributor". It is a grill constructed with a combination of louvers and vanes. The louvers are spaced, in an inclined position, parallel to each other and parallel to the sides of the frame in which they are placed. Upon one surface of each of the louvers are vanes extending in an oblique direction relative to the longitudinal dimension of the louvers.

The court found that the patent in suit was in a crowded field; that many prior patents had used inclined louvers and vanes to control and direct air passing therethrough; that these had disclosed constructions so similar to the one here involved that the claims in suit amount to a combination of old elements, and that in order to escape invalidity by being read so broadly as to read upon the prior art, they must be restricted to the specific device described in the patent. The court found that the accused device, manufactured by the defendant-appellees, had substantially different mechanical construction and means of operation from that of plaintiff-appellant. It held the claims of plaintiff's patent valid when so limited to the specific construction described, but that the device made by defendants did not infringe those claims.

Upon this appeal plaintiff attacks the court's conclusion that its claims must be limited to the specific construction described in the patent in suit. It admits the patent is not a basic one, but urges that it represented a material advance in the art, even although that art was crowded. It claims that the court should apply the doctrine of equivalents. If the patent is entitled to a range of equivalents, then, it says, defendants have infringed. It points to experiments performed in the trial court, some of them repeated in this court, showing that exhibit 4, one of plaintiff's structures, and exhibit 5, one of the accused devices, distributed air into a room in substantially the same way.

The first of the three claims here in issue reads:

"1. An air-distributing device comprising a plurality of plates disposed in spaced, substantially parallel relation, the front edges of said plates lying in substantially a single plane, and said plates being inclined relatively to said plane, and vanes provided on one surface of each of said plates, said vanes extending in an oblique direction relatively to the longitudinal dimensions of the plates."

It is noted that the vanes are stated to be on but one surface of the plates. And the only way in which such inclined vanes can be so placed is through the use of triangular vanes, as the specifications note.

Now, as the trial judge said, plaintiff "admitted that the normal and expected function of plate-like...