Hazeltine Research, Inc. v. Zenith Radio Corporation, Civ. A. No. 59-C-1847.

• Decision Date: 25 January 1965
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 59-C-1847.
• Citation: 239 F. Supp. 51
• Parties: HAZELTINE RESEARCH, INC., Plaintiff, v. ZENITH RADIO CORPORATION, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

239 F. Supp. 51

HAZELTINE RESEARCH, INC., Plaintiff, v. ZENITH RADIO CORPORATION, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 59-C-1847.

United States District Court N. D. Illinois, E. D.

January 25, 1965.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Thomas C. McConnell and Philip J. Curtis, Francis W. Crotty, Chicago, Ill., Dugald S. McDougall, Chicago, Ill., of counsel, for Zenith Radio Corp., defendant-counterclaimant.

Mason, Kolehmainen, Rathburn & Nyss, Chicago, Ill., Lawrence B. Dodds, Edward A. Ruestow, Little Neck, N. Y., Philip F. La Follette, Madison, Wis., and Francis H. Boos, Jr., Little Neck, N. Y., of counsel, for plaintiff.

AUSTIN, District Judge.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

PART I — FINDINGS OF FACT

I. The Parties, The Action, And The Issues.

1. Plaintiff Hazeltine Research, Inc., an Illinois corporation, is a patent holding and licensing company. Defendant Zenith Radio Corporation, a Delaware corporation, is a manufacturer of radio and television receivers. Both parties have regular and established places of business in Chicago, Illinois, in this District and Division.

2. The complaint alleges a cause of action for patent infringement, and the jurisdiction of this Court arises from the patent laws of the United States. The venue is properly laid in this District and Division.

3. The patent in suit is United States Letters Patent No. 2,547,648, entitled "Automatic Contrast Control System For Television Apparatus", issued to plaintiff on April 3, 1951, as the assignee of Arthur V. Loughren. Plaintiff has owned the Loughren patent at all times since its issuance. It was granted on an application, Serial No. 120,404, filed in the United States Patent Office on October 8, 1949. That application is asserted by plaintiff to be a "continuation" of a prior application, Serial No. 643,287, filed on January 25, 1946. On the basis of that assertion, plaintiff contends that the 1949 application is legally entitled to the 1946 filing date of the earlier one. Defendant challenges this position, asserting that the 1949 application was not truly a "continuation" and hence not legally entitled to the 1946 date.

4. Defendant is charged with having infringed claims 1, 2, and 4 of the patent in suit, the accused products being television receivers made and sold by defendant. All three of those claims were first submitted to the Patent Office in the aforementioned 1949 application, Serial No. 120,404. None of the claims carried forward from plaintiff's 1946 application is involved in the case.

5. Defendant denies having infringed plaintiff's patent, and it further avers that, in any event, plaintiff's claims in suit are invalid. The invalidity defense rests on these two independent grounds:

(a) Defendant asserts that the patent in suit, insofar as the claims alleged to be infringed are concerned, has an effective filing date of October 8, 1949, when the second application was filed, and that the claims in suit are accordingly invalid by reason of publication of their subject matter, and public use and sale thereof in this country, more than one year before the filing date of the patent.

(b) Defendant asserts that the claims in suit are void, regardless of their effective filing date, for failure to describe any invention patentable over the prior art.

Defendant also pleaded that the patent in suit is unenforceable by reason of its misuse by plaintiff. This defense, however, was reserved for separate trial, along with defendant's counterclaim seeking damages from plaintiff for antitrust law violations.

II. Facts Concerning Electrical Concepts And Circuit Elements Involved In The Case.

6. The term "current", in the electrical sense, refers to movement of electric charges. There are two types of electrical charge — positive and negative — but normally only negative charges (known as electrons) are mobile, and in consequence electric current nearly always consists of a flow of electrons. It is a characteristic of electric currents that they can flow only in a closed path or loop, and such a closed path is known in electrical parlance as a "circuit". A simple circuit may consist of only a single loop; more complex circuits may involve several interconnected loops.

7. There are two basic types of electric current, known respectively as "direct current" and "alternating current". A direct current is one that flows around a circuit in only one direction, whereas an alternating current is one which periodically reverses its direction of flow. In television circuits, the currents are often of complex character, involving both direct-current components and alternating-current components.

8. The force that makes current flow in a circuit is commonly called "voltage" or "potential"; it may be thought of as electrical "pressure", analogous in some respects to hydraulic pressure. Voltage results from the fact that unlike electric charges exert an attractive force on one another, while like charges exert on one another a corresponding repelling force. Anything that will cause a non-uniform distribution of electric charge in an object will create a voltage, and such voltage will produce an electric current if an electrical conductor is provided to complete a circuit between the oppositely charged portions of the object. The common chemical battery is one familiar type of voltage-generating device.

9. Voltage is commonly measured from one point in a circuit with respect to some reference point in the same circuit. In television equipment, the reference point most commonly used is the metal chassis on which the parts are mounted, and this is usually called "ground", even though in practice there may be no actual conductor joining the metal chassis to the earth.

10. A "resistor" is an electric circuit element intentionally designed to offer resistance to the flow of electric current through it, the amount of such resistance being measured in terms of a unit called the "ohm". When current flows through a resistor, a voltage proportional in magnitude to that of the current appears across the resistor's terminals. Accordingly, in addition to being used for other purposes, resistors are often employed in television apparatus to derive from a varying signal current a proportionally varying signal voltage. When thus used, a resistor may be called an "impedance" or "load impedance".

11. A "capacitor" is an electric device having the property of storing electric charge, analogous in some ways to an elevated water tank. When connected in a circuit with a direct-voltage source, a capacitor will accumulate charge from the source until the stored charge produces a counter-voltage equal to the source voltage. If a charged capacitor is connected into a conductive circuit, it will act temporarily as a voltage source and drive current around the circuit. Because a capacitor, unlike a battery, has no internal means of renewing its charge, however, the voltage of the capacitor will diminish as the current flows and ultimately drop to zero, unless its charge is replenished from some outside source.

12. Of outstanding prominence among the electrical components dealt with in this record are the devices known as "vacuum tubes". Two types are relevant here — the two-element vacuum tube, known as a "diode", and the vacuum tube having three or more elements, generically known as a "grid-controlled tube".

13. A two-element vacuum tube or "diode" consists of an evacuated envelope, usually made of glass, containing one conductive element called a "cathode" and another called an "anode" or "plate". These electrodes are spaced a short distance apart, with a vacuum in between. The cathode is coated with a material having the property, when heated, of giving off electrons (i. e., negative electric charges) in great quantities. When the anode is at a negative voltage with respect to the cathode, these electrons do not go anywhere; they simply form a "cloud" around the cathode. If a voltage source be connected in a circuit with the cathode and anode so as to charge the anode to a positive voltage with respect to the cathode, however, the attractive force exerted by the positive anode will draw the electrons from the cathode across the intervening vacuum and thus create an electric current in the circuit. No electrons will flow through the diode in the other direction, however, even if the polarity of the voltage source be reversed. Devices, such as diode tubes, which have this property of conducting current in only one direction are known in the electrical art as "rectifiers".

14. A "grid-controlled tube" is a device which, like the diode, has a cathode and an anode enclosed in an evacuated envelope. It has in addition, however, a third electrode called a "grid", situated in the space between the cathode and the anode. This grid is formed of spaced wires which do not, in the mechanical sense, prevent the flow of electron current from the cathode to the anode, but which may, by electric forces, control — i. e., regulate — the rate at which such current flows. If the grid be at the same voltage as the cathode, electron current will flow from the cathode to the anode whenever the anode voltage is positive with respect to the cathode, just as in a diode. If the grid voltage be made negative relative to the cathode, however, the rate of electron flow from cathode to anode will be reduced, and if the grid voltage be made sufficiently negative with respect to the cathode, the electron current between cathode and anode will be cut off entirely. Thus the grid performs a function analogous to that of an adjustable valve in a water hose. Tubes having only one grid are called "triodes", indicating that the tube contains three electrodes. Some tubes have more than one grid and are called "tetrodes", "pentodes", etc., depending on the number of electrodes they contain.

15. All the electrical concepts and circuit elements described in the findings just foregoing were old and well...