General Electric Co. v. Nitro Tungsten Lamp Co.

• Decision Date: 02 June 1920
• Docket Number: 227.
• Citation: 266 F. 994
• Parties: GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. NITRO TUNGSTEN LAMP CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

266 F. 994

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. NITRO TUNGSTEN LAMP CO.

No. 227.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

June 2, 1920

As assignee of Langmuir's patent, No. 1,180,159, dated April 18, 1916, plaintiff sues on claims 4, 5, 12, and 13. The patent is for an 'incandescent electric lamp,' and according to the specification 'relates to improvements' whereby is produced 'a lamp capable of operating at extraordinarily high efficiency and giving a light of marked increase in intrinsic brightness and whiteness.'

The patentee declares in his specification that it is not 'new in the art to use an incandescent lamp filament of tungsten,' but that, though 'it has been suggested in the past to introduce into a lamp bulb a neutral atmosphere at a fairly high pressure, I am not aware that any such lamps have ever been used commercially or have been technically successful. ' That success the patentee declares he has reached by the means set forth perhaps most generally in claim 4, viz.:

'The combination of a lamp bulb, a filling therein of dry nitrogen at a pressure materially in excess of that corresponding to 50 millimeters of mercury and a filament of tungsten of large effective diameter; the filament being thereby adapted for operation at a temperature higher than that which it would have if operated in a vacuum at an efficiency of one watt per candle.'

The fifth claim varies the fourth, by defining the pressure as one 'high or higher than that corresponding to 300 millimeters of mercury. ' The twelfth claim defines the elements of the combination in terms of relation to the filament temperature thus:

'In an incandescent lamp, the combination of the lamp bulb, a tungsten filament therein, and a gaseous filling, the effective diameter of the filament being sufficiently large and the heat conductivity of the filling being sufficiently poor to permit the lamp to be operated with a filament temperature in excess of that of a vacuum tungsten lamp operating at an efficiency of one watt per candle and with a length of life not less than that of such a lamp.'

The thirteenth claim describes the style of filament which has gained commercial recognition and evidently seeks to enlarge the range of the patent in respect of the gaseous bulb filling. It is as follows:

'An incandescent electric lamp having a closely coiled tungsten filament, the coil giving the effect of a filament of large diameter, an inclosing bulb, and a filling of gas having a materially poorer heat conductivity than hydrogen and at a pressure as high or higher than 300 millimeters of mercury the filament being adapted for operation in said gaseous filling at a temperature higher than that which it would have if operated in a vacuum at an efficiency of one watt per candle.'

Langmuir's lamps have achieved commercial success. It is often known as the 'gas-filled' or 'nitrogen' lamp, in contradistinction to the vacuum lamp of an art approximately 40 years old, and it is admitted that, if the patent is valid, defendant has made and sold an infringing article. The court below held with plaintiff; defendant appealed.

William A. Redding, William B. Greeley, and Charles J. Holland all of New York City, for appellant.

Frederick P. Fish and Hubert Howson, both of New York City, and Albert G. Davis and Alexander D. Lunt, both of Schenectady, N.Y., for appellee.

Before WARD, HOUGH, and MANTON, Circuit Judges.

HOUGH Circuit Judge (after stating the facts as above).

That Langmuir's lamp is in a sense a new thing is not denied; nor is it questioned that the thing has proved fit for use, especially for display and advertising purposes, and in that field achieved a measure of success. But the path of invention in respect of electric lighting has now been trodden by the feet of so many men of talent, and research even into its bypaths been so thorough, that the first defense offered is that 'the teachings of the prior art are such as to leave no room for the exercise of patentable invention on the part of Dr. Langmuir.'

As a second defense it is urged that the claims in suit are (a) too indefinite to be regarded as legal definitions of invention, and (b) are the result of proceedings in the Patent Office of such a nature as to deny the claims a construction rendering defendant an infringer. In one sense the case deals with a concrete article of commerce; in another, it is plain that this decision may be thought to affect the rights of the public in respect of lighting devices quite different from anything as yet constructed, so far as this record shows, under the protection of this patent. The field of experimental investigation has been, we think, greatly enlarged by the practical success of Langmuir's tungsten nitrogen lamp, and merely noting the admitted fact that the patent may possibly hereafter be construed to cover filaments other than tungsten, and gaseous fillings not named in the specification, this decision is to be restricted (as was done in the court below) to ascertaining whether the particular claims in suit confine to plaintiff the right of making, etc., the alleged infringing article. ^[1]

The subject, then, of this litigation, is what defendant has made and sold, viz. the 'comet' or 'standard multiple gas-filled tungsten' lamp, having (in a typical lamp) a tungsten filament .003 inch in diameter, helically coiled to a coil diameter of about .017 inch; dry nitrogen in the bulb at a pressure (cold) of about 700 mm.; and a starting efficiency of .82 to .95 watt per candle. After 500 hours' operation at rated voltage, the temperature of the filament will still be approximately 2520 degrees C., or about 400 degrees higher than that of one of same metal in a vacuum lamp operating at about 1 watt per candle. This is so close a copy of plaintiff's lamp in the 150-watt form, and every claim before us so plainly reads upon it, that it states the case to ask whether the man who first made this thing-- admittedly new to commerce when plaintiff offered it to the world-- was an inventor.

One basis for the answer to this question is the amount of knowledge imputed by law to that necessary legal fiction, the 'man skilled in the art,' when Langmuir applied for his patent in 1913. We may be brief, for there is little controversy over the historical facts; the inferences therefrom produce the conflict. The early history of incandescent electric lighting as revealed by evidence has been written by Wallace and Lacombe, JJ., in the Edison Lamp Case, 52 F. 300, 3 C.C.A.

83, affirming (C.C.) 47 F. 454. In that litigation Mr. Edison (testifying in May, 1890) said:

'The discovery I made was that a fine filament of carbon under the conditions I had did not disintegrate to any extent. That was the discovery as set forth in my patent, but * * * it required invention to carry out the discovery which I made.'

The decisions referred to scarcely do more than judicially validate the patentee's estimate of his own performance. Edison's lamp, perhaps somewhat aided by success in litigation, established for many years as the fundamentals of incandescent electric lighting the 'conditions' to which Edison referred, viz. a filament, a vacuum, and an all-glass inclosing globe.

Vacuum meant a commercial vacuum as established by experience and experiment, and the Edison combination was not defeated by the introduction into the bulb of a small quantity of bromine gas for the purpose of improving 'the stability of the carbon and the diminution of the blackening of the glass of the lamp. ' Whether the bromine was serviceable or not is immaterial, for its presence, as long as a commercial vacuum was maintained, neither affected the courts (Edison, etc., Co. v. Waring, etc., Co. (C.C.) 59 F. 358, affirmed 69 F. 645, 15 C.C.A. 700), nor led to essential modification in the art. By various subsidiary inventions, such as the 'getter' devices (Malignani v. Jasper Marsh, etc., Co. (C.C.) 180 F. 442), Edison's original lamp, with a life of 600 hours at about 6 1/2 watts per candle, was improved as time went on; but the filament remained carbon, and that filament still wore out, and in wearing blackened the bulb. The improvements did not wholly fulfill the belief or hope expressed by Mr. Edison in his 1890 testimony in saying:

'i thought that perhaps, having gotten rid of all oxygen, this disintegration would not be so large a factor as to prevent the use of a lamp for commercial purposes, and

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