Anraku v. General Electric Co.
Decision Date | 24 February 1936 |
Docket Number | No. 7959,7960.,7959 |
Citation | 80 F.2d 958 |
Parties | ANRAKU v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. PACIFIC IMPORTING CO. et al. v. SAME. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
J. Calvin Brown and Charles C. Montgomery, both of Los Angeles, Cal., for appellants.
Charles Neave and Hubert Howson, both of New York City, and Leonard S. Lyon, of Los Angeles, Cal., and John H. Anderson, of New York City, for appellee.
Before WILBUR, DENMAN, and HANEY, Circuit Judges.
From decrees ordering injunctions to be issued perpetually restraining the infringement of three claims of a patent owned by appellee, General Electric Company, by defendants in three suits in their sale of incandescent electric lamps, and ordering an accounting, the defendants in two of the suits only have appealed. All three cases were by stipulation tried together before a special master appointed by the court below, and the two cases in which appeals have been taken were presented to this court together.
The special master heard the testimony and reported his findings and conclusions. The special master found that appellee's patent has been infringed, and the trial court overruled the exceptions to the findings, adopted them, and entered the decrees accordingly.
The history and problems of the development of the filament in incandescent electric lamps up to the time of the Pacz patent, which is owned by appellee, and is the one at issue here, are set out in the following findings of the special master:
* * * The object of the Pacz invention is shown in his specification as follows:
The Pacz patent covered both the process of manufacture and the product of the process. Defendants imported from Japan and sold here lamps and the filaments contained in them which were manufactured in Japan. The process by which the lamps were manufactured is not disclosed by the evidence. Since the process of manufacture was not used in this country, appellee was unable to show infringement in that respect, but limited its contention of infringement to the product of the process. Claims 25, 26, and 27 are in issue here. Claim 25 is: Claim 26 differs only in that it specifies that the filament is a "drawn" filament. Claim 27 differs from claim 25 in specifying that the filament is "composed of tungsten containing less than three-fourths of one percent of non-metallic material."
Appellants urge that there was no infringement by defendants because, first, the claims in issue are void; and, second, lack of proof of infringement.
We have heretofore said that the findings of the special master in such cases are entitled to great weight (Waxham v. Smith, 70 F.(2d) 457), and that we will not weigh the evidence where there is some substantial evidence to support such findings (Stoody Co. v. Mills Alloys, 67 F.(2d) 807).
Validity of the Claims.
In the case last cited 67 F.(2d) 807, page 809 it is said:
With these principles in mind, we examine the specific points relied on by appellant and alleged to show that the claims are invalid.
1. It is contended that the "claims" are void because "the objects" of the Pacz application "are not those of the claims"; that "the object of that application is the purification of the tungsten, not the production of tungsten grains of any relative size or of any characteristic contour." Assuming, without determining that the claims must conform to the purpose as stated, appellants are in error in this contention for the reason that they assume the purpose of the application to be the purification of tungsten. This assumption is based on the various statements in the specification mentioning that the tungsten by the Pacz process "will retain to a much higher degree than heretofore its original properties." The specification also contains such words as "to accomplish the purification," the "purifying material," "purifying agent," and it is said "This method is desirable in that certain basic impurities are thus eliminated at the beginning."
The special master found as follows: "* * * In view of the evidence, nothing is found that tends to prove that the applicant did not attempt to fully describe his invention or that he attempted to cover more than was necessary. * * *"
There is substantial evidence to support this finding. The object of the invention, quoted above, is to substantially eliminate offsetting and to substantially prevent sagging in a tungsten filament. These purposes were accomplished by his invention. In the application, Pacz stated: "In the preferred form of my invention I bring into intimate association with tungsten a material which will have the desired influence upon the grain growth of the metal. * * *" And thereafter briefly describes his method, and then states:
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