Interchemical Corporation v. Sinclair & Carroll Co.

• Decision Date: 22 May 1943
• Citation: 50 F. Supp. 881
• Parties: INTERCHEMICAL CORPORATION v. SINCLAIR & CARROLL CO., Inc.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

50 F. Supp. 881

INTERCHEMICAL CORPORATION v. SINCLAIR & CARROLL CO., Inc.

District Court, S. D. New York.

May 22, 1943.

Robert W. Byerly, of New York City, for plaintiff.

Hoguet, Neary & Campbell, of New York City, for defendant.

SYMES, District Judge.

This suit involves the validity of Letters Patent No. 2,087,190, granted July 13, 1937, to the International Printing Ink Corporation, New York — an Ohio corporation — the name of which has since been changed to the Interchemical Corporation, the plaintiff herein.

The original inventor and patentee is Albert E. Gessler. The patent was applied for July 14, 1932, renewed April 11, 1936, and finally issued July 13, 1937. According to the patent his invention relates to printing inks, and has for its object the preparation of a novel type of printing ink claimed to possess many advantages over the printing inks theretofore known, and overcoming many of the disadvantages associated with the procedure which it has been necessary to use in order that such inks may be properly applied to produce a satisfactory print.

It is claimed the ink described in the patent has introduced a rather revolutionary change in the very old art of printing. Before this patent it seems printing inks have often been made by grinding pigments in oil or oil varnishes, or both, and had been characterized by their relatively slow rate of drying, depending upon polymerization, oxidation and/or absorption, and as a result have experienced great difficulty in the printing process by greatly delaying the speed of operation. This necessitated the maintenance of large and cumbersome auxiliary equipment and extra labor at great expense, and also a dependence of the printing process upon the time required to obtain a complete drying.

Ordinarily printing has been done by spreading a thin ink film on a series of rollers and then taking the ink from the rollers on to raised type, or cuts, and pressing those against the paper. To do this successfully it was necessary the ink be rather thick, of the consistency of molasses. These inks have been made out of drying oils, principally linseed oil, with which the pigment was mixed. Linseed oil is what is known as a drying oil, in that it gradually hardens when exposed to the air, due to its absorption of oxygen from the air and changing its state. This drying ordinarily takes a day — and even by the use of so-called dryers; that is chemicals to hasten its absorption of oxygen, it formerly took at the best two or three hours to dry. This meant that ordinarily the printed impression did not become hard and dry until two or three hours after it was made. This caused delay and expense, particularly where it was sought to print on both sides of the paper, because having printed one side it was necessary to wait until that side dried before the other side of the paper could be printed. This because the ink, not being dried, would smudge or offset.

Newspapers are printed very fast, because they use paper resembling blotting paper, which consists of a long web of paper run over a cylinder with type on it, printing one side of the paper, which then goes over another cylinder which prints on the other side. It is then cut up and folded right on the press. This is possible, because the paper being like a blotter, absorbs the ink and enables the other side to be printed at once.

When it comes to finer quality of printing — say on good paper with a smooth finish, which it is necessary to use if printing of pictures and half tones is to be done — a quality of paper very different from that used for newspapers is necessary. Formerly, for instance, when it came to printing magazines with large circulations, such as the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc., it was necessary to use a flat bed press, printing on one side of the sheet, and then pile up between the sheets with something to keep them from sticking, and wait three or four hours before printing the other side.

As the circulation became larger the web press was used. Trouble was encountered with the ordinary standard linseed oil, because ink on the first side of the web would not dry. Many experiments were tried to make it possible to immediately print the second side. A traveling blotter was used which traveled along behind the paper, and then was rolled up on a different roll. This not only did not prevent smudge entirely, but took a good deal of the wet ink off the paper, so the final copy was light; that is, did not have ink enough on it.

Therefore the art attempted to make the ink dry faster by causing the drying oil to absorb oxygen faster. This by heating and blowing ozone on it. That is, after the sheet came out from the type, and before the second side was printed, it was passed over a steam roller or device which warmed the paper. At the same time ozone was blown on it — ozone being a very active form of oxygen — which was absorbed by the oil faster than it would be if it was just quietly exposed to the air.

This method did not prove commercially successful. Shooting ozone on the paper was a difficult and dangerous thing to do in a printing plant, although it did make the drying oils oxidize more rapidly than they had before. That seems to have been the status of the art when the invention in question appeared.

The next step was an attempt to speed up printing by using volatile solvents that would evaporate very quickly. But this presented a new difficulty, in that the ink would dry on the rollers before printing, would not print properly as the ink must be wet when printed. It proved more successful, perhaps, in what is known as rotogravure printing, but did not help in the ordinary printing from raised type, with which the thin, watery ink cannot be used. The patentee, Gessler, a chemist employed by a chemical company making pigments and chemicals, was asked by an ink manufacturer to make an odorless ink, and while engaged in that research he claims to have developed the ink in question, which was not only odorless, but could be dried very rapidly on a press. He states in his patent (p. 1, column 1, line 41), after stating the problem, that it had been proposed to use various types of lacquers in printing processes, particularly cellulose lacquers, because it was well-known that such lacquers are characterized by a high degree of volatility.

Such rapid drying, however, would render an ink made therewith unsuitable for printing from plates or rollers, because they will quickly dry and harden thereon, and will have only the effect of yielding dry or half dry material to the printing form or type, and no satisfactory impression can be made on the material to be printed.

He states (p. 1, column 2, line 3): "I have discovered, however, that if in contrast to the above, cellulose compounds, particularly nitrocellulose, are dissolved in solvents with high boiling points, this difficulty may be avoided".

Further he states that if the solvents used are too slow in evaporating, the same difficulties which occur in the case of ordinary oil varnish inks, are encountered. He then states he has found (p. 1, column 2, line 10): "* * * that certain such high boiling solvents, very well adapted to dissolve cellulose compounds, have at room temperature such slow drying properties that, while they may be employed as solvents in this ink, and while an excellent impression may be transferred to the surface to be printed upon, the impression will nevertheless be so moist that it is likely to become blurred or smudged by rubbing after many hours or even days."

Then, line 19: "This defect, however, may be remedied by the present invention, which involves a recognition of the principle that some of these high boiling solvents exhibit, at temperatures elevated above room temperatures, such a remarkable and quick increase in their vapor pressure that they volatilize rapidly, while at the same temperatures others show little change in their vapor pressures and therefore are practically non-volatile".

By room temperature is meant 20 to 25 degrees centigrade.

This ink of Gessler's is different from the ordinary linseed oil ink, being made of a thickener dissolved in a solvent. The thickener may be a resin or nitrocellulose, or some material of that sort dissolved in the solvent, making a thick solution like linseed oil. However, it does not dry by oxidation like linseed oil, but does dry because the solvent evaporates leaving the thickener which acts as a binding substance that anchors the pigment to the paper. A successful ink for the purposes of the art in question has to be like linseed oil, capable of being spread out in a thin film that can be put on the type without it drying.

He claims to have studied the problem and experimented with a number of different solvents, all of which were rejected by printers because they became hard or gummy on the rollers, and would not print. A few printed all right, but took longer than a linseed oil ink to dry, so were not an improvement.

It finally came to Gessler's attention, he testified, that some printing presses were provided with steam-heated rollers. He claims he solved the problem by producing his ink which dried almost instantly when run on an ordinary press provided with a heating drum, or some means of heating the paper immediately after it had gone through the rollers of the press. That is, he claims to have produced an ink that could be printed from raised type and dried instantly. This, it is claimed, was a great boon to the printing industry, because it meant much more rapid, as well as high-grade printing. His ink differed from linseed oil ink in the use of a solvent that dried rapidly.

The disclosure of the patent he claims, is the discovery for the first time that this problem could be solved; that a printing ink could be made wet enough to spread on the rollers, and do the printing without drying thereon, and that could be dried immediately...