Gillette Safety Razor Co. v. Standard Safety Razor Corp., 2207.
| Decision Date | 12 December 1932 |
| Docket Number | No. 2207.,2207. |
| Parties | GILLETTE SAFETY RAZOR CO. v. STANDARD SAFETY RAZOR CORPORATION. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
George P. Dike, of Boston, Mass., and Henry F. Parmelee, of New Haven, Conn., for plaintiff.
George E. Middleton, of New York City, and Bristol & White, of New Haven, Conn., for defendant.
This is a suit brought by the plaintiff to restrain an alleged infringement of letters patent No. 1,858,316, issued May 17, 1932, to the plaintiff as assignee of Ralph E. Thompson and Theodore L. Smith for improvements in safety razors, on an application filed July 30, 1930. Infringement of claims 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 11 is charged. Of these claims 1, 4, and 5 are combination claims for a safety razor, while claims 7, 8, 9, and 11 are for a razor blade. The plaintiff charges defendant with contributory infringement of claims 1, 4, and 5 and with direct infringement of the remaining claims, to wit, 7, 8, 9, and 11.
The Thompson and Smith Patent in Suit.
This patent describes a safety razor which is an improvement on the so-called "Gillette Type" of razor. In this type of razor a thin, flexible, and elastic blade of oblong contour with unsharpened ends, and internally apertured to receive positioning and clamping means, is removably secured in a holder which is made up of three parts, namely, a guard member, a cap, and a handle. The guard member is adapted to support the blade adjacent to its longitudinal cutting edges. The cap is provided on opposite sides with parallel straight edges which engage the blade adjacent to the cutting edges of the latter and flex it transversely on the guard member (like a fulcrum) during the process of clamping the blade by means of the handle between the guard member and the cap, so that when the parts are assembled, the blade is maintained in transversely curved position and is externally supported adjacent its cutting edges to give it rigidity while shaving. A razor of this type is described in the original Gillette patent, No. 775,134, Defendant's Exhibit U. Its commercial form as manufactured by plaintiff is in evidence as Plaintiff's Exhibit 4. This razor was the original Gillette and is referred to in the record as the "old style" Gillette razor.
During the many years that plaintiff manufactured and distributed its razors, several more or less important improvements were made thereon by plaintiff. The improvement made immediately preceding that of Thompson and Smith which is described in the patent in suit is one made by one of the co-inventors, Ralph E. Thompson. This improvement is shown and described in patent No. 1,815,745 and was before this court in Gillette Safety Razor Company v. Hawley Hardware Company, 60 F.(2d) 1019, decided July 21, 1932, and more recently in Gillette Safety Razor Company v. Standard Safety Razor Corporation (Equity No. 2233) 2 F. Supp. 64, decided December 8, 1932, in which case the parties were the same as the parties to this suit.
The invention described in the Thompson patent, No. 1,815,745, includes a "Gillette type" blade having cut-out corners so that any injury to the corners of the cap will not spring the blade out of shape and so force the cutting edge out of proper shaving position or cause the corners of the blade to break off, and a cap provided with reinforcing lugs on the underside of each corner which fill in the cut-out corners of the blade to protect the blade and prevent injury to the cap corners, and a guard member having recesses to receive the lugs on the cap corners so that the razor elements will not be prevented from clamping the blade along its cutting edges. The Thompson blade has the usual two positioning pin receiving holes and between them a central perforation to accommodate the clamping pin on the cap element of the razor.
In an effort to improve the positioning means of the "Gillette Type" razor among other features, Thompson and Smith invented the razor and blade described in the patent in suit. They discarded the positioning pins of the old style Gillette razor and substituted therefor the positioning rib or bar 29 on the underface of the cap (Figs. 2 and 3), which bar is extended through a slot 23 in the blade into a central groove 33 in the guard member. Comparing this structure with the old style Gillette razor, it will be noted that the length of the bar 29 exceeds the distance between the outer points of the two positioning pins of the old style Gillette razor. From the record it is clear that if the old three-hole blade of the old style Gillette razor swings on the positioning pins due to the normal clearance in the blade holes, more variation in the exposure of the blade at its ends is produced than is produced by the same clearance in the bar-type razor of the Thompson and Smith patent. From the testimony it is also certain that if the possible error at the ends of the blade of the three-hole blade is 2.4 thousandths of an inch, the same clearance will produce an error of only 0.8 thousandths of an inch or only one-third as much as in the three-hole blade. Therefore the error is reduced by two thirds. The evidence convinces me that accurate positioning of the blade in the holder is essential to good shaving and that the variation in exposure at the ends of the cutting edges of the blade causes unsatisfactory shaving. By making the blade positioning means longer, Thompson and Smith improved the old style razor construction by materially reducing the differences in edge exposure. Thompson and Smith applied their positioning bar to the Thompson cap described in patent No. 1,815,745 and made it of the same length as the cutting edges of the blade, having found this to be the most satisfactory dimension. They discarded the three holes of the Thompson blade described in the patent and substituted therefor a slot to receive the bar on the underside of the cap. This slot they made at least as long as the cutting edges, and thereby obtained new and useful results to which reference will hereinafter be made.
The Thompson blade, with its corner recesses, was found to be effective for the purpose described in the Thompson patent, No. 1,815,745, but in another respect it had a disadvantage. The removal of a portion of the metal of the blade at each corner weakened the blade and changed the distribution of the stresses to which it is subjected when flexed in the razor, with the result that the maximum stress per unit was increased and the factor of safety, already small, was correspondingly reduced.
One of the objects of the Thompson and Smith invention as shown and described in their patent was to provide a safety razor blade of the Thompson type which will have recesses at its corner portions and thus have the advantages of the Thompson patent, but in which the factor of safety will not be less than in prior blades of the "Gillette type." The patentees in their specification say, page 1, line 91, to page 2, line 8:
Their invention therefore consists not only in combining their special blade positioning means with the corner lug containing cap of Thompson in combination with the blade above described, but also in the blade per se as the latter has advantages even when combined with the old style Gillette razor.
Other advantages of the Thompson and Smith invention were not realized by them at the time they made their invention in the early part of June, 1929, and not even at the time the specification of the patent was signed by them, which was some time prior to July 30, 1930, but were brought out at the trial of this case. These advantages are:
1. Less likelihood of the buckling of the blade;
2. Less danger of breakage; and
3. Less trouble and loss to the manufacturer from buckling of the blade — and these advantages will be discussed in their order.
1. Razor blades are made from thin, soft stock of steel which is only a few thousandths of an inch thick. In the manufacture of blades the steel is hardened and tempered. In the hardening process the soft material is brought to the required temperature and then suddenly chilled. Thereafter it is tempered in order to give the steel the right condition for a cutting edge, making the edge tough enough to prevent ordinary cracking or abrading in the sharpening process and at the same time hard enough to maintain the edge so as to give a considerable amount of service to the user. The process of hardening and tempering is called heat-treating. In hardening the steel when it is suddenly chilled certain parts of the material cool more quickly than others, as the result of which severe internal stresses are set up within the steel. These stresses are known as hardening or temperature stresses. It will be readily seen that in the chilling step one part of the blade cools faster than the others. The cooled part shrinks instantly and pulls against the parts which have not yet been cooled and this causes the blade to buckle or warp. This trouble was long ago recognized by the plaintiff, and for a long while attempts have been made to cure it, as will be seen by reference to Plaintiff's Exhibits 9 and 10, which are the patent to Nickerson, ...
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