Crowson v. Dennington
| Decision Date | 11 June 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 562.,562. |
| Citation | 141 F. Supp. 647 |
| Parties | Jonas H. CROWSON, Plaintiff, v. Dan J. DENNINGTON, Joe Dennington, and Sid Dennington, d/b/a Dennington Cane Company, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Arkansas |
George F. Edwardes, Texarkana, Ark., William E. Wiggins, Texarkana, Tex., for plaintiff.
Shaver, Tackett, Jones & Lowe, Boyd Tackett, Paul Jones, Texarkana, Ark., for defendants.
This cause having been tried to the Court, this memorandum is filed in lieu of separate findings of fact and conclusions of law, as authorized by Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A.
By this action the plaintiff, Jonas H. Crowson, seeks injunctive relief and damages against the defendant, Dan J. Dennington,1 for an alleged infringement of letters patent No. 2,574,248 covering a machine for the straightening of cane fishing poles.
In his amended complaint, plaintiff alleges that the patent was issued on November 6, 1951, and that the defendant has been infringing thereon for five or six years prior to the filing of the suit. In his answer the defendant, among other things, denies the validity of the patent and also denies infringement.
The patent in suit consists of four claims and discloses a machine consisting principally of three cylindrical rollers, two of which are mounted parallel to each other on a metal frame and the third of which is superimposed upon the other two so as "to define in the center * * * a pole receiving space extending from end to end of the rollers and bounded throughout its length by the sidewalls of the rollers." The top roller is "adjustable toward and away from the other rollers," that is to say, its front end can be raised or lowered by means of a hand lever and pull-back spring depicted in the drawings and referred to in the patent. The rollers themselves are described in claim 3 of the patent as follows:
"* * * each roller having one end portion formed with undulations and its other end portion formed cylindrically, the first named end portion of the rollers being substantially co-extensive in length and in opposed relation to each other, the undulations of one of the rollers being staggered relative to the undulations of the other two rollers for pressing out crooked portions of a pole."
In the fourth claim those undulations are referred to as "one or more alternating circumferential crests and valleys; the crests and valleys of at least one of the rollers being staggered relative to the crests and valleys of the other rollers adjacent thereto and being adapted to engage crooked portions of (a) pole." In that claim the remaining portions of the rollers are described as "being formed of constant diameter for preventing reversion of a straight pole to crooked shape." The machine also includes a heating apparatus for the softening of the poles to be straightened, which apparatus is located underneath the undulating portions of the rollers. When the machine is in operation, the rollers are rotating in one direction as a result of which the pole under treatment is rotated in the opposite direction; the rotation of the rollers can be achieved by "any suitable drive."
According to the patent, the main object of the invention is to provide a machine of the character described adapted to straighten poles speedily and efficiently "by permitting their passage longitudinally of and between a series of rotating rollers, with said rollers being novelly formed in a manner to remove all kinks, bends and other crooked portions, so as to provide a pole substantially straight from end to end."
The operation of the machine is described as follows:
The evidence in the case discloses that the plaintiff is 86 years old and is an inventor of long experience and considerable talent. His inventiveness goes back to at least 1906 and since that time he has invented a number of useful devices for which patents have been issued. The evidence also discloses that about 1946 the plaintiff, after a number of unsuccessful efforts to work out an efficient machine to be used in his then business of manufacturing and selling cane fishing poles conceived and reduced to practice the machine described in the patent in suit, and actually used that machine for a time in his manufacturing operation, although said machine was not used for a very long period of time.2
Prior to 1947 the defendant, Dennington, was connected with the plaintiff in the latter's business from time to time, but in the year just mentioned he went into the cane manufacturing business for himself, using in his process a machine presently to be described, and which machine the plaintiff contends infringes his patent. The evidence indicates that the defendant is an aggressive manufacturer and salesman, and it was not long before he achieved mass production of his poles, and by 1951 his competition had in effect forced the plaintiff out of business.
In the manufacture of poles the defendant, of course, is required to straighten them, and in his straightening process he makes use of a machine which generally resembles in size and shape that covered by plaintiff's patent. The defendant's machine consists of three cylindrical rollers without undulations arranged in relation to each other in a manner practically identical to the arrangement of the rollers in the plaintiff's machine, and which also contains a pole receiving space between the rollers. The top roller of the defendant's machine is also "adjustable toward and away" from the bottom two by means of a foot pedal and when the machine is in operation, the rollers are mechanically rotated. As pointed out, the defendant's rollers have no undulations, nor does it have a heating apparatus under the rollers; it does have a feature that is absent from the plaintiff's machine, namely a water cooling device located above the rollers, which accelerates the cooling of the poles after straightening.
To operate the defendant's machine the operator introduces one end of the crooked pole to be straightened into the receiving space between the rotating rollers by lifting and then lowering, by means of the foot pedal, the movable top roller. Heat is then applied by said operator to the portion of the pole to be straightened by means of a gas burner located outside the roller assembly, and he then by the use of hand and eye straightens the pole over the burner; after a portion of the pole is straightened, the operator again lifts the top roller, and thrusts the straightened portion between the rollers, where it is water cooled and held straight; this process is continued until the entire pole has been straightened and thrust into the roller assembly. After completion of the straightening and cooling, the pole under treatment is removed from the assembly and put into an adjacent trough for further cooling, after which it is taken to another machine for staining.
From the foregoing it is at once apparent that in both of the processes here involved3 the pole to be straightened is first made soft and pliant by heat, the bends and kinks are then removed and the straightened pole is held straight until it cools, after which it remains straight; it is equally apparent, however, that when the patented machine is in use, the poles are heated...
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