Bontrager v. Steury Corp.

• Decision Date: 14 June 1978
• Docket Number: No. S 75-133.,S 75-133.
• Citation: 457 F. Supp. 526,201 USPQ 813
• Parties: Lloyd J. BONTRAGER and Jayco Inc., Plaintiffs, v. STEURY CORPORATION, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

457 F. Supp. 526

201 USPQ 813

Lloyd J. BONTRAGER and Jayco Inc., Plaintiffs, v. STEURY CORPORATION, Defendant.

No. S 75-133.

United States District Court, N. D. Indiana, South Bend Division.

June 14, 1978.

Eugene C. Knoblock, South Bend, Ind., for plaintiffs.

Charles W. Ainlay, Goshen, Ind., Richard Bushnell, Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, District Judge.

This memorandum will reflect the legal basis for the separately entered findings of fact and conclusions of law.

This is an action in which Lloyd J. Bontrager and Jayco Inc. charge the Steury Corporation with infringement of claims 1, 2, 6, 7 and 10 of U.S. Patent No. 3,495,866 relating to a collapsible vehicle. Steury denies infringement on the grounds that Bontrager has no valid patent right and, in any event, the patent claims do not cover Steury's structure.

Invalidity is shown by citations of prior art and expert testimony which establish that the elements and functions of Bontrager's combination patent claims are old and provide no new or synergistic result. Thus, the claimed subject matter was obvious and the claims are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

The record also establishes irregularities in the filing of the Bontrager patent application covering the subject matter conceived by Glen Riegsecker and not by Bontrager. Principal claim 1, when stripped of Riegsecker's contibutions, is fully anticipated by the prior art and is invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 102.

In view of the failure to join Riegsecker as an inventor while still including his ideas, the claims are also invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 112 for overclaiming. Bontrager's admission that the alleged improvement over his own prior patent (PX 15) lies solely in the lift establishes that he was further guilty of overclaiming since the claims purport to cover the entire vehicle.

Noninfringement is established by showing that the claims include elements for which there is no corresponding or equivalent element in Steury's accused structure. In fact, the accused structure is so significantly different from Bontrager's that the Patent Office granted Steury its own patent.

The patent in suit, Patent No. 3,495,866, issued to Lloyd J. Bontrager is the inventor. The patent claims are directed to a "collapsible vehicle" having a lift or jack mechanism for raising and lowering a movable top. With this language, the Bontrager claim purports to cover all types of mobile units having collapsible tops (R. pp. 458, 528). As a specific example, the patent discloses a camping trailer.

Prior to starting his own business¹, Jayco Inc., Bontrager was employed by Starcraft Corporation in the Goshen area. While so employed, in about 1964, he was given the assignment of developing a camping trailer. His first step was to attend a trade show and examine competitive units. He then set about to build a collapsible camper for Starcraft. A Starcraft distributor suggested that he provide some type of lift for raising the top and he then developed a lift system which is covered in a patent No. 3,314,751 (PX 15), issued to Bontrager, but assigned to his then employer, Starcraft. The Starcraft-owned patent is prior art with respect to Bontrager's later work.

The vehicle disclosed in Bontrager's Starcraft-owned patent is a conventional camping trailer except for a lift or jack mechanism for raising the top, which lift includes four telescopic posts located at the vehicle corners. Each post has an outer bottom section, an intermediate section, an inner top section and interconnected cable and pulley means carried by said sections for extending the intermediate and top sections during operation of the lift. In order to operate all of the posts simultaneously, the patent teaches the use of a single winch having a main cable wound thereon and four separate cables attached to the main cable and directed around suitably placed pulleys to each of the corner posts.

It was with this work background at Starcraft that Bontrager quit his job during January, 1968, and promptly, on February 1, 1968, incorporated his present company, Jayco Inc., for the purpose of going into the camping trailer business.

Bontrager knew he could not use an exact duplicate of his old lift since it was covered in the Starcraft-owned patent and he also testified that he knew he could come up with something which would sell (R. p. 134). His solution for avoiding his own prior patent was to substitute suitably guided thrust members or flexible push rods connected directly to the lower end of the inner top post sections and to the four winch cables to raise the posts.

At the start, Bontrager's company, Jayco, employed Glen Riegsecker² to help with building the first Jayco trailer. In the course of his work, Riegsecker conceived some ideas of his own (See Riegsecker deposition, DX FF, pp. 25, 26) which were incorporated into the lift mechanism. These ideas included:

(a) interengaging stops between the sections of the telescoping posts for limiting extension of the posts.

(b) an arrangement of individual cables extending inside of rectangular horizontal guide tubes at each of the corner posts and connected to the various thrust members for actuating the same.

For these ideas, Bontrager agreed to pay Riegsecker 50¢ unit for all trailers sold by Jayco. This agreement is memorialized in the minutes of the February 19, 1968, Jayco Board of Directors meeting (DX GG).

After a brief Patent Office examination, and a telephone interview with the Examiner, the Bontrager patent in suit issued on February 17, 1970. Only a single prior art patent was cited by the Examiner, i. e. Hagenson 3,273,934 (DX P).

In the winter of 1970, Bontrager became aware of the Steury structure which he now charges with infringement and on February 2, 1971, Bontrager caused his attorney to address a letter (PX 17-1) to Mr. Virgil Steury charging infringement of the patent in suit. After investigation, Steury's attorney, Charles W. Ainlay, forwarded a letter (PX 17-3) dated March 31, 1971, to Mr. Knoblock denying infringement. Thereafter, Steury received no further word or complaint from Bontrager for several years until on January 31, 1975, Bontrager sent a letter (PX 17-4) to Virgil Steury referring to a substantially contemporaneous telephone call with Steury. In this letter, Bontrager demanded a royalty for himself and also for Glen Riegsecker. On February 12, 1975, Virgil Steury replied to Bontrager (PX 17-5) and again advised him that there was no infringement of the Bontrager patent.

Thereafter, on July 25, 1975, this Action was filed. Bontrager has asserted only claims 1, 2, 6, 7 and 10 of his patent to be infringed.

The Steury Corporation operated by Virgil Steury and his brother, Edwin Steury, commenced business in 1957 and initially engaged in the manufacture and sale of fibreglass boats. A variety of fishing boats and runabouts using outboard engines and also inboard/outboard drive systems were produced. In the course of developing their boats, the Steurys became familiar with and used various mechanical actuating mechanisms incorporating pulley and cable systems and/or flexible thrust members or push rod systems for such purposes as steering, clutch operation, throttle control, etc. One such system using the well known Bowden cable concept or, in other words, a flexible push or thrust member operating in a guide tube, was produced by Teleflex Corporation as shown in DX BB.

During the early 1960's, Steury expanded its business into the recreational vehicle field and commenced to manufacture and sell camping trailers having a collapsible top. Initially, the tops were supported by spring biased folding arms which required the owner manually to manipulate the top to raise and lower it.

Subsequently, Steury became aware of various lift mechanisms whereby an operator could turn a single crank for simultaneously raising and lowering all corners of the trailer top. One such lift mechanism which early came to their attention was the Starcraft lift mentioned above. The Starcraft lift was being successfully sold back in 1967 and indeed still is being successfully sold. However, to the Steurys, the use of four separate cables extending from the main cable and around various pulleys to various positions on the trailer presented manufacturing and adjustment problems they wished to avoid.

Sometime after Bontrager started his new business, he invited both Virgil Steury and Edwin Steury to visit Jayco to see his new trailer top lift. At that time, they recognized that while Bontrager had modified the Starcraft structure by incorporating the general idea of flexible push or thrust members functioning in a manner similar to the Teleflex control for extending the posts, he was still using the Starcraft patent concept of four separate cables and multiple pulleys extending from the winch to each of the corner posts which they did not like.

In 1969 and before the Bontrager patent in suit issued, Steury also learned of a lift being produced by Corl Corporation in Breman, Indiana. This lift, which incorporates the structure shown in Hostetler et al. 3,508,782 (DX T) of record herein, uses flexible push rods in the form of springs for extending the telescoping post at corners of the trailer. However, Corl incorporated screw rods and cooperating nut elements and gears for actuating the corner posts. Steury purchased a number of the Corl lifts, and while the design was satisfactory, problems developed with respect to the quality of the Corl structure and the use of the unit was discontinued.

Thereafter, Virgil Steury conceived a structure for simultaneously actuating flexible thrust members for lifting a camper top with a simple single main cable connected to a winch and to all of the flexible members. This structure was incorporated into the Steury trailers on an optional basis in 1970, and, as pointed out above, became known to Bontrager at that time. This...