Flakice Corporation v. LIQUID FREEZE CORPORATION

• Decision Date: 23 March 1955
• Docket Number: No. 31060.,31060.
• Citation: 130 F. Supp. 471
• Parties: FLAKICE CORPORATION, a corporation, and York Corporation, a corporation, Plaintiffs, v. LIQUID FREEZE CORPORATION, a corporation, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

130 F. Supp. 471

FLAKICE CORPORATION, a corporation, and York Corporation, a corporation, Plaintiffs, v. LIQUID FREEZE CORPORATION, a corporation, Defendant.

No. 31060.

United States District Court, N. D. California, S. D.

March 23, 1955.

Naylor & Lassagne, Jas. M. Naylor, San Francisco, Cal., Daniel L. Morris, Harold L. Stults, Curtis, Morris & Safford, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Richard W. Seed, Seattle, Wash., Tinning & Delap, Richmond, Cal., Mellin, Hanscom & Hursh, Oscar A. Mellin, Leroy Hanscom, Jack E. Hursh, San Francisco, Cal., for defendant.

MURPHY, District Judge.

This is a patent case involving machines for the production of arched shaped ice wafers. These wafers are produced by freezing a thin sheet of ice on a rigid rotating cylindrical drum. The cylindrical shape of the freezing surface produces the arched shape provided the ice can be removed without splintering or scraping it off. If the bond which holds the ice sheet to the drum can be broken before the ice is broken into splinters the ice comes off in wafers. It is the method of removing the ice from the drum which is important here.

Plaintiffs assert infringement of two patents — Short patent 2,310,468, dated February 9, 1943 and Raver patent 2,308,541, dated January 19, 1943. Both the Short and Raver patents are owned by the Flakice Corporation and licensed to the York Corporation. The defendant manufactures and sells under a license of the Lees-Lessard patent No. 2,585,020, dated February 12, 1952.

In addition to pleading non-infringement the defendant alleges that the patents are invalid. They assert (a) that the patents are not a step beyond the prior art which achieves the dignity of invention; (b) prior use; and (c) that the claims are invalid as stating a function and if interpreted to include the accused machine, then they include the machines of the prior art and are invalid.

I recognize that each claim is in reality a separate invention and that ultimately each of the problems involved will have to be solved in relation to a particular claim. However, each separate claim is an effort to spell out the same basic mechanism which is asserted to be invention. The defense of anticipation goes to the patents as a whole. Whether a particular claim is functional depends upon whether it states the asserted "invention" in terms of result rather than the particular method for accomplishing that result.

I will approach the problem in this fashion: I will briefly explore first the history of the art and the mechanical structure of both the Short and Raver patents and the accused machine. I will examine into the claimed invention and the prior art generally and then relate this to the specific claims and conclude with the question of infringement. The Short patent will be discussed first and the Raver patent secondly.

The Small Ice Making Art

The owner of the Short patent is the Flakice Corporation. This company is largely the work of one man — Crosby Field. Field is the holder of some 115 patents, nineteen or twenty of which are connected with the production of small ice. When Field began his experimentation in 1915 which led to the development and patenting of the Field flexible freezing cylinder ice machine, the commercial ice industry was limited to the production of large blocks of ice, 300 pounds in weight. The production of ice cubes was in its infancy. The production in large blocks had a low thermal efficiency and involved a large amount of labor and transportation cost. To cut these blocks up into small pieces (one method was to saw out ice cubes) was unsatisfactory. A method of producing small ice was needed.

Field experimented with many different type machines until he finally hit upon the flexible cylinder machine. It froze a thin sheet of ice on a flexible cylinder which rotated partially submerged in a water tank. As the ice sheet emerged from the water the cylinder was flexed and the ice broken off. This machine produced arched ice wafers but the commercial machines were large and costly. Everyone agrees that the arched wafer form of ice was advantageous over snow ice, chopped ice or block ice. The arched shape prevents recongealing. If a small commercial machine could be developed which could be installed at the place where the ice was used and would operate cheaply, a great advantage to the user would result.

Short joined the Field organization in 1924. The problem which confronted Short and the other workers in the field, was the production of arched wafers in a commercially acceptable form and manner in a machine that would be capable of producing that ice continuously and over long periods of time and which was small enough and cheap enough to interest the relatively small user.

When Short first suggested the process which finally became his patented machine, Field did not think it would work acceptably. But further development led to the application for a patent on January 29, 1938.

The patent was licensed to the York Corporation — a large manufacturer of all types of refrigeration equipment. Raver working for the York Corporation as an engineer in their research department developed the Raver machine independent of the Short invention and applied for his patent on December 7, 1939.

No machines using the Short specifications were ever built. The York Company has manufactured and sold over 13,000 machines patterned after the Raver patent.

The defendant is a California Company and operating under a license from Lees-Lessard has sold over 1,000 of the accused machines. This is substantially cutting into York's business and is the reason for the suit.

The Machines

Three machines for producing arched ice wafers are involved — (1) that disclosed by the Short invention; (2) the Raver machine; (3) the accused machine manufactured and sold by the defendant.

In common they:

(a) Freeze a thin sheet of ice on a cylinder by applying water to a constantly refrigerated cylinder. In Short and the accused machine the cylinder is vertical. In Raver it is horizontal.

Short freezes on the inside by spraying a water curtain on the inside of the cylinder.

Raver and defendant freeze on the outside — Raver by partially submerging the cylinder in water — the defendant by spraying a water curtain over the outside of the cylinder.

(b) The sheet of ice becomes progressively thicker as the refrigerating medium operates through the cylinder on a continuing water supply

(c) The progressive thickening is stopped by discontinuing the water supply.

(d) The ice is removed.

(e) The clean cylinder is again covered with the water supply, the freezing progresses, the ice sheet progressively thickens — and the cycle is continued.

The removal of the ice is the subject of the dispute. (This will be described more particularly later.)

The freezing process is accomplished in the following manner:

Short — The water supply is a tank above the vertical cylinder. Water flows through holes in the bottom of the tank. The holes are placed in the arc of a circle so that the water flows through them to the inside of the freezing cylinder. The cylinder is fixed. The tank rotates and by successive steps the water flow is stopped ahead of the removal mechanism. The removal mechanism and the water curtain progress by the same steps.

Raver — The refrigerated horizontal cylinder is partially submerged in a tank of water. About 1/5 of the cylinder is out of the water. As the clean cylinder rotates in the water a continuously thickening ice sheet is frozen on it until the sheet emerges from the water. The ice is removed at the height of cylinder rotation and the clean portion of the cylinder continues on to again enter the water tank.

Defendant — The water supply is a tank above the cylinder. The water curtain flows over the outside edge of the fixed cylinder. As the removal mechanism rotates about the outside of the cylinder the water curtain is stopped both before and behind the removal mechanism, leaving such area free of the water curtain.

The Removal Mechanisms — This is the contested element. The Short patent uses a wedge to remove the ice. The wedge is a vertical bar which is parallel to the axis of the cylinder.

A picture is worth a thousand words — so that looking from above the Short machine appears like this:

The bar is connected to a toggle arrangement so that when both the cylinder and the wedge have no rotational movement the wedge is forced gradually into the ice sheet.

This severs the ice sheet from the cylinder.

The wedge is removed — the wedge member and the water curtain rotate so that with the rotation exaggerated it appears like this:

The wedge is again inserted.

Raver —

The removal mechanism in Raver consists of wedges mounted helically (like a lawn mower). The freezing cylinder is positively driven to rotate. The helical wedge cutter is not power driven. As the cylinder and the attached ice sheet rotate, the helical cutter is driven due to the fact that part of the helical cutter is impinged into the ice sheet. Because of its helical shape only a part of a single wedge is in the ice sheet at any one time but the cutter rotation causes the helical wedge to progress across and into the ice sheet. The distance between the helical wedges is such that a second wedge impinges into the ice sheet before the operative wedge is removed. The freezing on the rotating cylinder and the ice removal occur continuously and at the same time but at different positions on the cylinder itself. Schematically Raver looks like this:

Pictorially the lawn mower cutter looks like this:

Defendant's Machine — The removal is accomplished by a series of about 11 wedge shaped blades mounted at even intervals on a vertical bar. The bar is parallel to the axis of the freezing cylinder. The blades extend in a horizontal direction and are normal to the freezing surface. Looking at the machine from the side, it looks like this schematically:

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