Curtis v. Land, Patent Appeals No. 4564.

• Decision Date: 03 July 1942
• Docket Number: Patent Appeals No. 4564.
• Parties: CURTIS et al. v. LAND.
• Court: U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA)

129 F.2d 549 (1942)

CURTIS et al. v. LAND.

Patent Appeals No. 4564.

Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.

June 15, 1942.

Rehearing Denied July 3, 1942.

Bartlett, Eyre, Keel & Weymouth, of New York City (Richard Eyre, of New York City, of counsel), for appellant.

Brown & Jones, of New York City (Donald L. Brown, of New York City, and Nathaniel R. French, of Cambridge, Mass., of counsel), for appellee.

Before GARRETT, Presiding Judge, and BLAND, HATFIELD, LENROOT, and JACKSON, Associate Judges.

HATFIELD, Associate Judge.

This is an appeal from the decision of the Board of Appeals of the United States Patent Office affirming the decision of the Examiner of Interferences awarding priority of invention of the subject matter defined by the counts in issue (Nos. 1, 2, and 3) to appellee, Edwin H. Land.

The invention relates to electric signal devices, particularly railway traffic signal devices.

Count 3 is illustrative of the involved counts. It reads: "3. A signal device including a housing, a signal lamp within the housing, and means for suppressing phantom signals, said means being positioned to intercept light rays entering the housing and reflected from the vicinity of the lamp and comprising a composite sheet polarized to suppress substantially the passage of redirected light from within the housing."

The interference is between appellants' application No. 182,036, filed December 28, 1937, and appellee's application No. 178,696, filed December 8, 1937.

Appellants are the junior parties, and the burden was upon them to establish priority of invention by a preponderance of the evidence.

The gist of the involved invention is a means for suppressing phantom signals, and comprises, as stated in the quoted count, a "composite sheet polarized to suppress substantially the passage of redirected light from within the housing" of a prior art traffic signal lamp.

It appears from the record that when the prior art traffic signal lamps are exposed to the sun's rays or to other external sources of light, they frequently so reflect the light as to appear to be illuminated, thus indicating to engineers and others that the signal lamp is operating, when, as a matter of fact, it is not. This reflected light is referred to in the record as "phantom" or "false" signals. The obvious dangers of such signals need be no part of our discussion here.

Appellants are engineers in the employ of their assignee, the Tung-Sol Lamp Works, Inc., Newark, New Jersey, a manufacturer of incandescent light bulbs, including such as are used in railway signal lamps.

Appellee is the president of his assignee, the Polaroid Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts.

It is contended here by counsel for appellants, as it was before the tribunals of the Patent Office, that appellants conceived the involved invention sometime in the spring or early summer of 1937, and disclosed it to appellee in a letter dated August 2, 1937, signed by Mr. Braunsdorff (one of the appellants), and addressed to the Polaroid Corporation, attention Mr. Richard T. Kriebel, advertising manager for the Polaroid Corporation.

Certain correspondence between Mr. Braunsdorff, the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories, Inc., of Boston, Massachusetts (a predecessor of the Polaroid Corporation), and Richard T. Kriebel, on behalf of the Polaroid Corporation of Boston, was made a part of the record. Among such correspondence was a letter, dated June 11, 1937, wherein Mr. Braunsdorff stated that he would like to obtain "a piece of Polaroid approximately five inches in diameter," and that he expected to use the "Polaroid disc in a lighting unit to eliminate certain redirected light." On June 23, 1937, a letter of acknowledgement was written to Mr. Braunsdorff, wherein it was stated that the witness Kriebel was out of the city and that when he returned he would reply to Mr. Braunsdorff's letter. On July 23, the witness Kriebel, on behalf of the Polaroid Corporation, wrote Mr. Braunsdorff quoting prices for polaroid, which polaroid, according to the testimony of the witness Kriebel, was the Polaroid Company's "ordinary plane polarizing sheet" and its "standard product at that time." (Italics ours.) In that letter, the witness Kriebel offered Mr. Braunsdorff the use of the Polaroid Company's laboratory and the aid of the company's experts in solving the problem to which Mr. Braunsdorff had referred. On August 2, 1937, Mr. Braunsdorff wrote the Polaroid Corporation, attention Mr. Kriebel, as follows:

"Thank you for your letter of July 23rd in which you offer the services of your laboratory for our problem. I believe it best to outline this situation in the hope you may be of some assistance. One of the large railroads is using a special color signal system with which they are having some difficulty from what is commonly known as `phantom images'. This is caused by interference from sunlight at certain times of day with light rays entering the signal which gives the appearance of signal being lighted normally. It is my thought that the use of a Polaroid screen will prevent some of this redirected light from illuminating the color filter. The inside of this signal contains a parabolic reflector and rounded bulb, both of which surfaces tend to redirect light coming in. Since this condition is very critical for position of observation, I believe it has possibility of control by using Polaroid. The lens opening of this signal is approximately 4½ inches in diameter and I had hoped to obtain a sample sheet of Polaroid (approximately 5 inches square which could be trimmed to size) which could be fitted into this opening between lens and color filter.

"If this idea is unsound or if you have already tried it in practice, please advise. As a lamp manufacturer, we have received this request to improve general lighting conditions. If the use of Polaroid offers any improvement in the correction of this phantom image, I can assure you the field of application would be very large.

"Please treat this request as confidential." (Italics ours.)

On August 9, 1937, the witness Kriebel replied to that letter, expressing appreciation for Mr. Braunsdorff's statement of the problem confronting appellants regarding railway signal devices and stating that he had requested the Polaroid Corporation's technicians to submit a report which he hoped he would have in a week or ten days. On September 14, 1937, Braunsdorff again wrote to the witness Kriebel, stating that if the report of the technical division of the Polaroid...