Copease Mfg. Co. v. American Photocopy Equipment Co., Civ. A. No. 55C550
| Citation | 189 F. Supp. 535 |
| Decision Date | 29 November 1960 |
| Docket Number | 55C2179.,Civ. A. No. 55C550 |
| Parties | COPEASE MANUFACTURING CO., Inc., Plaintiff, v. AMERICAN PHOTOCOPY EQUIPMENT CO., a partnership; Samuel G. Rautbord, a partner; and American Photocopy Equipment Company, an Illinois corporation, Defendants. COPEASE MANUFACTURING CO., Inc., Plaintiff, v. PORAY, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
E. M. Luedeka, Soans, Anderson, Luedeka & Fitch, Lloyd C. Root, Chicago, Ill., and Curtis, Morris & Safford, Edward G. Curtis, Arthur V. Smith and Wm. C. Conner, New York City, for plaintiff.
Richard R. Wolfe, Franklin M. Crouch, Wolfe, Hubbard, Voit & Osann, Thompson, Raymond, Mayer, Jenner & Bloomstein, Albert E. Jenner, Jr., and John J. Crown, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.
This matter having been fully tried before the Court, and the Court having read the pleadings filed herein by the respective parties, and the Court having heard and examined all the testimony, documents and exhibits presented by the respective parties and admitted into evidence, and the Court having considered the evidence so presented and admitted at the separate trial on the so-called "fraud" issue as well as that at the final trial on the remaining issues, and the Court having read, heard and considered the briefs, memoranda and oral arguments submitted by counsel in support of their respective positions, and the Court being fully advised, the Court hereby enters its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law as follows:
Findings of Fact
1. The present actions, consolidated for trial, are for infringement of claims 1-6 and 9-11, inclusive, of United States Letters Patent Number 2,657,618, entitled "Developing Apparatus", issued November 3, 1953, to Walter Eisbein of Stuttgart, West Germany, on an application filed April 17, 1950. Plaintiff has abandoned its charges of infringement of claims 6, 9, and 10, leaving in issue claims 1-5, inclusive, and 11.
2. Plaintiff in both actions, Copease Manufacturing Co., Inc., is a Delaware corporation organized November 16, 1954, and has its principal place of business in New York, New York. Plaintiff is, and has been since its inception, engaged solely in the business of granting licenses under the patent in suit.
3. Defendant American Photocopy Equipment Co., a partnership, had its principal office and place of business at Chicago, Illinois. It ceased business operations in January 1954, and contemporaneously conveyed its assets to defendant American Photocopy Equipment Company, an Illinois corporation, formed in January 1954, shortly before the aforesaid conveyance of partnership assets.1
4. Defendant Apeco, the corporation, has its principal office and place of business within the Northern District of Illinois. It succeeded to the business of the partnership defendant.
5. Defendant Samuel G. Rautbord, a resident of the Northern District of Illinois, was the sole general partner of the partnership defendant and is president and one of the principal stockholders of the corporate defendant.
6. Defendant Poray, Inc., the sole defendant in this action, is an Illinois corporation having its principal office and place of business in the Northern District of Illinois.
7. Plaintiff acquired the patent in suit from the patentee Eisbein by written assignment dated November 16, 1954, pursuant to an agreement dated August 14, 1953. The assignment does not expressly convey any choses in or rights of action for damages or right to sue in respect of any act of infringement that might have occurred prior to the date of the assignment. However, the agreement does expressly contemplate assignment of the right to sue for any asserted infringement of this or any other U. S. patent issued to Dr. Eisbein or to Develop, k. g., a partnership of which Dr. Eisbein was one of three partners.
8. The device of the patent in suit and the accused machines comprise developing appartus designed primarily for use in connection with the development step of a photocopying method known as the diffusion-transfer-reversal process. In a generalized way, this process includes two steps: the exposure to light of the photosensitive emulsion on a "negative" sheet, and the development of the negative with transfer of the image to a "positive" sheet.
In the usual method of effecting the first step, the original sheet to be copied is placed in face-to-face contact with the photosensitive negative sheet coated on one side with an emulsion layer containing a dispersion of silver halide grains, with the "copy" side of the original in contact with the emulsion side of the negative. Light is directed through the back of the negative sheet against the "copy" side of the original. The light reflected from the original back onto the negative exposes the latter to form in its emulsion a latent image consisting of a pattern of exposed silver halide grains. This latent image or pattern of exposed silver halide grains is a reversed or "mirror" image of the original, due to the face-to-face relation of the two sheets during the time of the exposure to light.
After this exposure operation, the original and negative are separated, the original having no further function in the process. The second step requires that the negative sheet be moistened with a processing liquid and pressed face-to-face against the positive sheet, which may also be moistened. This latter is coated on its face with a non-photosensitive emulsion which contains specks of metallic silver or the like to serve as precipitation nuclei (in effect, catalysts) to induce reduction of unexposed silver halide grains on the negative sheet. The negative and positive sheets, when pressed together after moistening, tend to adhere one to the other. The sheets are left in contact for approximately ten to forty seconds. When peeled apart, a positive image formed by chemical action appears on the positive sheet. The quality of the positive image depends, among other things, on the quality and contents of the processing liquid, that of the chemical emulsions on the sheets, the exposure time, and the time during which the sheets remain in contact. A waiting period is necessary in order to develop a visible or patent transfer image on the positive sheet.
9. The processing liquid contained within the developing machines contains both a developing agent and a silver halide solvent. When the negative sheet or both negative and positive sheets are immersed in the processing liquid, the developing agent reduces the silver halide grains in the exposed areas of the emulsion (corresponding to the light background areas of the original) while leaving the unexposed portions of the negative (corresponding to the dark printed matter of the original) unaffected. When the moistened sheets are pressed together in face-to-face relation, the silver halide solvent in the processing solution dissolves the unexposed grains of silver halide and causes them to be diffused from the emulsion of the negative into that of the positive, where the developer acts with the assistance of the "catalyst" to reduce these unexposed grains to metallic silver, producing blackened areas corresponding to the dark areas of the original and produce a positive copy of the original. The second "mirror" reversal produced by this face-to-face transfer operation makes this a "rectified" or readable copy.
10. Prior to about 1949, the best known commercial method of document copying was the so-called "wet" process. This process was essentially nothing more than conventional photography. After the sheet of "negative" paper had been exposed to the original document to be copied, it was separated from the original and placed into a first tray of developer liquid for approximately 30 seconds, then into a second tray containing water and washed for at least 30 seconds to remove the developer. Then it was placed into a third tray containing a "fixing" solution or silver halide solvent for at least five minutes, and into a fourth tray of water where it was washed again for at least five to ten minutes. When the negative was removed from the last washing tray it was dripping wet and had to be dried for approximately five minutes, depending upon the type of drying equipment employed. This entire operation thus took approximately twenty minutes and produced only a negative copy.
To produce a positive copy, the entire process had to be repeated, that is, a new sheet of photosensitive paper had to be exposed to the negative and then developed, washed, fixed, washed again and dried. Thus the production of a positive copy required a total time on the order of forty minutes.
The "wet" process had the further disadvantage of requiring a darkroom, since the exposure, developing and washing steps and at least the first portion of the fixing step had to be performed in substantial darkness. Moreover, the process required open trays of liquids which may be damaging to clothing fabrics and irritating to the skin. Finally, the process required skill and experience. It was unsuitable as a general office photocopying process. For this reason, it was performed almost exclusively by commercial organizations such as blue-print and photostat companies.
11. The record in these proceedings indicates that both Dr. Edith Weyde of the German photographic firm I. G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft, commonly known as AGFA, and Andre Rott of the Belgian photographic firm known as Gevaert, claimed to have originated the diffusion-transfer-reversal process in about 1940.
12. AGFA filed patent applications on this process in a number of countries, the first application being filed in Germany in January, 1941. The first of the AGFA patents on the diffusion process to issue was ...
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