Columbia Broadcasting Sys. v. SYLVANIA ELECTRIC PROD., INC.

Citation294 F. Supp. 468
Decision Date23 December 1968
Docket NumberCiv. A. No. 66-35.
PartiesCOLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, Plaintiff, v. SYLVANIA ELECTRIC PRODUCTS, INC., Defendant.
CourtUnited States District Courts. 1st Circuit. United States District Courts. 1st Circuit. District of Massachusetts

Herbert P. Kenway, George Crowley, Kenway, Jenney & Hildreth, Boston, Mass., for plaintiff, John A. Reilly and Kenyon & Kenyon, New York City, of counsel.

John J. Curtin, Jr., Bingham, Dana & Gould, James H. Grover, Roberts, Cushman & Grover, Boston, Mass., for defendant, and John Hoxie, Davis, Hoxie, Faithfull & Hapgood, New York City, of counsel.

OPINION

CAFFREY, District Judge.

This is a civil action for alleged infringement of three patents relating to color television picture tubes, namely, Fyler and Rowe Patent No. 2,690,518, and two Giuffrida Patents, Nos. 3,179,836 and 3,222,172. At issue herein as to all three patents are both validity and infringement.

1. The Fyler and Rowe '518 Patent.

This patent concerns itself with a mechanical feature of a color television picture tube called a shadow mask. The evidence indicates that eventually, in the slow development of the color picture tube, different colors were produced by utilizing three electronic beams emanating from the narrow part, or neck, of the tube directed toward a glass plate or screen near the exterior surface of the tube on which were placed hundreds of trios of phosphor dots. Each trio consisted respectively of a red, a green, and a blue phosphor dot, and each dot would give off light of the named color when activated or struck by an electronic beam.

As early as 1938 it was suggested that the accuracy of the impingement of the electronic beam on the proper-colored phospor dot be controlled by placing between the source of the electronic beam and the phosphor dots a masking device, or selective barrier of some sort, so aligned as to prevent the electronic beam from impinging on a dot of an unwanted color, i. e., the masking device or selective shield was to be constructed with holes so positioned that the electronic beam or gun which was intended to activate red phosphor dots would hit or impinge upon only red phosphor dots. Other holes were placed in the mask so as to hopefully insure that the electronic gun designed to activate the blue phosphor dots would impinge only upon the blue phosphor dots, and likewise as to the green dots.

Radio Corporation of America (RCA), a pioneer in the field of developing commercially acceptable and marketable color television, first developed a color picture tube which contained as the shadow mask (as these shields are now called), a flat metal plate with hundreds of holes, which plate was tightly secured to a large heavy steel frame. Immediately behind this flat metal plate was a flat glass plate, or screen, bearing trios of phosphor dots. The phosphor dots and the tiny holes on the metal plate were so positioned with respect to one another that the holes effectively prevented the beam from any of the three electronic guns from activating a dot of the wrong color. Experience soon established, however, that a high percentage of the electronic energy from the electronic beams struck and, therefore, heated, the metallic shadow mask. Because of the well-known fact that metal expands when heated, the heating of the flat metallic plate carried with it enough lateral movement of the tiny holes to cause a misalignment between the holes and the phosphor dots. This misalignment, or "lack of registry," as it is called in the jargon of the industry, caused the production of undesirable colors, smears of colors, etc. RCA attempted to circumvent this difficulty by pre-heating the metallic screen prior to its being secured to the frame and then clamping it under tension to the frame while in a hot and expanded condition. This attempted solution did not prove to be commercially feasible. Among its drawbacks were the difficulty and high expense of manufacture, lack of brightness, and a tendency still to misregister when overheated. Fyler and Rowe, the coinventors, conceived the idea that if the shadow mask could be constructed as a segment of a sphere it would not have to be preheated and thus could be mounted free of tension. This, in turn, made it possible that when heated, and being spherical, it would expand radially rather than laterally as its temperature rose from the impingement thereon of the stream of electrons from the three guns in the neck of the tube. Stating the effect differently, the expansion of the curved shadow mask would be along the axis of the electronic beams rather than across the axis of the beams, as was the expansion movement due to heating when the holes were located on a flat metallic screen or shadow mask.

The effect of changing the movement of the holes from lateral to radial was to eliminate any significant disturbance of the alignment between the holes and the phosphor dots. This, in turn, maintained a desirable and commercially acceptable level of registry. Other side products of this redesign of the tube interior were the elimination of the massive frame, high tension, and heavy glass plate which had previously been used as the location of the phosphor dots. It made it possible to deposit the phosphor dots on the spherical glass surface of the face plate of the tube itself, thus producing a relatively larger picture from a given size tube than had been produced when the phosphor dots were located on the glass plate well inside the shell of the tube.

To obviate any possibility that the serious difficulties and the substantial amounts of money and years of time invested by the electronics industry in the development of a commercially acceptable color television picture tube may be understated by the foregoing portion of this opinion, which states in rather general and non-technical language the nature of this controversy and the difficulties sought to be solved by this patent, I now recite herein, and accept as factual, Paragraphs 19 through 59 of the Pre-Trial Stipulation filed by the parties. In so doing I have in mind the criteria set forth by the Supreme Court in Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1, 86 S.Ct. 684, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1965), particularly the considerations recited by the Court at pages 17-19 with regard to "obviousness," the various ramifications thereof and tests therefor. I also have in in mind the observation of the Court of Appeals for this Circuit in Colourpicture Publishers, Inc. v. Mike Roberts Color Productions, 394 F.2d 431, at p. 434 (1st Cir. 1968):

"`Courts, made up of laymen as they must be, are likely either to underrate or overrate, the difficulties in making new and profitable discoveries in fields with which they cannot be familiar * * *.' * * * A layman can be beguiled into finding a device `obvious' just because it appears so simple when the deed has been done."

COLOR TV HISTORY (In Part)

19. Public broadcasting of television, as of radio, is lawful only when carried on under license of the Federal Communications Commission and in accordance with its prescribed "standards." Those standards for each broadcasting service result in a single uniform type of electrical signal which home receivers are designed to receive but do not make reference to the design of the reproduction device, as in television, the picture tube per se.

20. Broadcasting of monochrome television pictures, commonly called "black-and-white", was authorized in 1946 based on development over a number of years, during which there was effort also on color television, along several lines, but without yielding an acceptable system at that time. In 1949, in the light of the situation as it then saw it, the FCC called for proposals of standards for a color television system.

21. An acceptable color television system required development in the several departments of the system including the viewing camera, the transmitter circuitry, the receiver circuitry and the picture tube at the receiving end.

22. CBS and RCA were early proponents of color TV systems, which were demonstrated to the FCC in November, 1949 along with others. The CBS system was publicly demonstrated in November, 1950 and was adopted by the FCC as the national standard, to become effective November 20, 1950. It remained the single standard until December, 1953.

23. That CBS system, called a "field sequential" system, used a monochrome picture tube at the receiver with an added rotating disc in front of the tube through which the tube was viewed. The disc was made up of red, green and blue filters forming sectors of the disc whose passage in sequence in front of the tube was timed to coincide with the reception of red, green and blue "fields" in rapid sequence, giving the viewer the sensation of seeing the three colors at once. This gave an acceptable color picture but had the disadvantage of not being "compatible", meaning that, without an adapter, the several millions of existing conventional receivers could not receive in black-and-white the field-sequential picture sent out for reception in color, and that a set equipped for color reception by this system had to have added parts to enable it to receive in black-and-white the conventional black-and-white picture. Hence, two standards were required, one for color and one for black-and-white.

24. This disadvantage of the "field sequential" system had led others to work on a system which would be compatible, enabling the owner of a color set to receive either a broadcast in color or a conventional broadcast in black-and-white, and enabling the existing black-and-white receivers to receive the color program in black-and-white. RCA had demonstrated such a compatible system, called "dot sequential", in 1946, but it utilized three picture tubes, one for each color, with mirrors to combine the three images into one picture seen by the viewer. This system was demonstrated to the FCC in November, 1949, along with the CBS system, and was inferior for reasons...

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4 cases
  • COLUMBIA BROADCAST. SYS., INC. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 71 C 687.
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 7th Circuit. United States District Court (Northern District of Illinois)
    • 18 Marzo 1975
    ...also relies heavily on an article in the French magazine Nature not cited in the Patent Office, known to the Patent Office, or cited in the Sylvania litigation. Two drawings in this 1951 article show a color TV tube with a curved mask and a curved phosphor screen on the face plate. Interest......
  • Tokyo Shibaura Elec. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp.
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 3th Circuit. United States District Court (Delaware)
    • 7 Novembre 1975
    ...(if necessary). 2 For a general discussion of the developments leading up to this action, see Columbia Broadcasting System v. Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., 294 F.Supp. 468 (D.Mass. 1968), aff'd in part and remanded in part, 415 F.2d 719 (1st Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 1061, 90 S......
  • Columbia Broadcasting Sys. v. Sylvania Electric Prod., Inc.
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)
    • 7 Ottobre 1969
    ...The history of both legal and technological developments is extensive and is set forth in detail in the district court opinion. 294 F.Supp. 468 (D.Mass.1968). The abbreviated discussion which follows recounts only so much of that history as is necessary for resolution of the issues before I......
  • In re CBS Color Tube Patent Litigation
    • United States
    • United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
    • 28 Giugno 1971
    ...Inc. After a lengthy trial, the District Court held all three patents valid and infringed. Columbia Broadcasting System v. Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., 294 F.Supp. 468 (D.Mass.1968). On appeal, the First Circuit held that the Fyler and Rowe Patent was valid and infringed, but vacated t......

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