Edison Electric Light Co. v. Peninsular Light, Power & Heat Co.
| Decision Date | 08 May 1900 |
| Docket Number | 754. |
| Parties | EDISON ELECTRIC LIGHT CO. et al. v. PENINSULAR LIGHT, POWER & HEAT CO. et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
This is a suit to restrain infringement of two patents relating to systems of electrical distribution granted to Thomas A edison. The complainants are two corporations, one of which is the owner of the patents, and the other a licensee under the first for the city of Grand Rapids, Mich. The defendants are two corporations,-- the Peninsular Light, Power & Heat Company and the Lowell Water & Light Company. The last named generates electrical current at its station near Lowell by water power, and transmits the current to its transforming station at the city of Grand Rapids, and there delivers it to the first-named company, which distributes it to its customers in the city over its own wires. In 1888 the Livingston Hotel, at Grand Rapids, was in process of construction, and the owners applied to the Edison Light Company of Grand Rapids to wire the building for lighting by electricity. This was done; the wires being put in in a permanent way before the building was plastered, so that they have become in every sense a fixture. The Grand Rapids Company had at that time in the city of Grand Rapids a fully-equipped electrical generating plant, and was engaged in the business of supplying electrical current to all who desired to use same for illuminating or other purposes employing in the distribution of its current for lighting purposes an arrangement of wirescovered by the Edison patent No. 274,290, and known generally as the 'Edison Three-Wire System,' and an improvement thereon which included said three-wire system of distribution with a 'tension-reducing device,' as shown by the second claim of Edison's patent No. 287,516. The local company, operating under the general company owning said patents, does not seem to have included the installation of house wires as a part of its regular business; but, because there were then no construction companies carrying on the business of suitably wiring buildings, it did, as a means of introducing electricity, wire buildings when its services were desired, charging only the cost of material and labor. The owners of the Livingston Hotel paid to the said local company the sum of $544, as the cost of material and labor. The system adopted in wiring the hotel was that covered by the Edison patents. From the completion of the wiring, the hotel was supplied with the current generated by the said Grand Rapids Company until the fall of 1894, when, for economical reasons, it ceased to take its supply from said company, and set up a dynamo of its own, with a steam engine to operate it. This dynamo was connected with the house-wiring apparatus installed by the Grand Rapids Company and from that time until February, 1896, the proprietors of the hotel supplied and used their own current. In February, 1896, the hotel proprietors discontinued the generation of their own current, and since that date have been supplied with current by the appellee the Peninsular Company, which, as before stated, takes its supply from its co-appellee, the Lowell Company. The Edison three-wire system, installed by the Edison Grand Rapids Company, and paid for by the Livingston Hotel people, terminated at the 'service cut-out,' or 'fuse block,' just inside, at the top of the rear door of the hotel. When the hotel, in February, 1896, determined to obtain its supply of current from the Peninsular Company, that company installed outside this rear door two of its transformers or tension-reducing devices, and connected them with its conductors and by wires to the hotel 'service cut-off,' using the cut-off and distributing wires originally installed. The connection between the Peninsular Company's main conducting wires and 'Stanley Two-Phase, Three-Wire System.' This was found to be dangerous, as greatly overheating the middle wire of the house-wiring system. On this account the connection between the house wiring and the outside wires of the Peninsular Company was changed to the connection proper under the Edison three-wire system. This the appellants charge to be an infringement of their patent rights. The hotel company is not, however, sued; but the Peninsular Company, as the company directly dealing with it, and directly furnishing the current in the manner stated, is sued, as contributing to the hotel's infringement, and the Lowell Company, as vendor of the current distributed by the Peninsular Company, is joined as a co-contributor to such infringement. The court below dismissed the bill, holding that the installation by the local electrical company of a permanent system of wires, arranged according to the system of the Edison patents, operated as a license to utilize that system in connection with any source of supply of current and a tension-reducing device adapted to the proper use of the Edison method of distribution. The opinion of the court may be found in 95 F. 669.
Richard N. Dyer, for appellants.
John E. More, for appellees.
Before LURTON and DAY, Circuit Judges, and CLARK, District Judge.
LURTON Circuit Judge, after making the foregoing statement of the case, .
1. The decree dismissing the bill as against the Lowell Light & Power Company was clearly right. It sold the current which it generated to the Peninsular Company. That current was as well adapted for use in one mode of distribution as another, and was adapted equally as well for furnishing power as for illuminating purposes.
Being suitable for a great variety or methods of use, it does not come within the rule applied when the article furnished is adapted only to the infringing use. Neither is there any evidence that it supplied current to the distributing company with any intent that it should be supplied to the hotel company, or, if so, that it was to be used in an infringing way, or in contributing to the infringement of any of the patented methods of distribution for house lighting covered by the patents of the appellants. In the case of Heaton-Peninsular Button-Fastener Co. v. Eureka Specialty Co., 25 C.C.A. 267, 77 F. 297, the fasteners made and sold were not only peculiarly adapted to the infringing use, but they were made and sold with the definite intent that they should be so used.
2. This brings us to the serious controversy in the case. The Grand Rapids Company constructed and sold to the proprietors of the hotel the apparatus constructed, according to the arrangement of the Edison patent, for the electrical lighting of said building. After some years it ceased to take current from that company, and is not supplied by the appellee the Peninsular Company. Between the outside overhead wire of the Peninsular Company and the service cut-off or fuse block of the hotel apparatus, it has placed two transformers or tension-reducing devices, each of which is connected with the house fuse block by two wires. Appellants say that, by this combination of the house apparatus with the generators of the Peninsular Company and tension-reducing devices or transformers, the hotel is enabled to use its wiring system in a way which infringes the Edison patents, and that the Peninsular Company is a contributor to such infringement, and must respond in damages. When the Peninsular Company first began to deliver current to the hotel, the connection between the two transformers and the service cut-off was made by three wires, being the system known as the 'Stanley Two-Phase, Three-Wire System.' That method of delivering current overloaded the middle wire of the house apparatus to such an extent as that it became dangerously heated, and could not carry the current with safety to the building. That method of delivering the current, appellants say, was a noninfringing way, and is not the subject of complaint. To obviate the danger incident to the overheating of the middle wire of the house apparatus, the three wires between the transformers were changed to four wires; that is, two wires between each transformer and the service cut-off of the house apparatus. By this change of the method of connecting the transformer with the hotel wires, the current delivered by the Peninsular Company is distributed over the house...
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