Kessler v. Buick Motor Co., 6805.
| Decision Date | 02 May 1933 |
| Docket Number | No. 6805.,6805. |
| Parties | KESSLER v. BUICK MOTOR CO. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
J. Carlisle Stuckey, Cody Fowler, and R. C. Brown, all of Tampa, Fla., and Charles Rogers Fenwick, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
A. G. Turner, of Tampa, Fla., and Edward N. Pagelsen, of Panama City, Fla., for appellee.
Before BRYAN, FOSTER, and WALKER, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal in a patent suit from a decree on final hearing dismissing a bill to enjoin infringement and for an accounting.
Letters patent, 1,336,237, were issued April 6, 1920, on an application of Benjamin H. Kessler, appellant, filed April 18, 1918, for improvements in the valve attachments of internal combustion engines. The specifications set forth that the principal object of the invention is to eliminate lateral or side play of rocker arms and reduce noise of operation. The drawings which purport to set forth the preferred embodiment of the alleged invention disclose a single line of hooked coil springs so holding one end of each rocker arm as to prevent it from moving laterally, but fail to disclose springs or other means of preventing lateral movements of the other ends of the rocker arms. It was alleged that appellee infringed the first two claims which read as follows:
The suit was defended on the grounds (1) that the claims relied on are so indefinite and general that they fail to furnish information to the public of the limits of the monopoly asserted; (2) that the patent is invalid because of appellant's failure to explain the best mode contemplated by him in applying the principle of his alleged invention; and (3) that the alleged invention had been anticipated by the prior art and disclosed in prior publications.
The claims here involved cover all types of internal combustion engines. Appellee uses what is known as the valve-in-head type of automobile engine. In that type rocker arms are provided to transmit the action of the push rods to the valves. These rocker arms are mounted on a shaft with one end of each resting on a push rod and the other on a valve stem. There are two valves to each cylinder, one called the intake valve and the other the exhaust valve. Appellant testified that he made discovery of his invention in 1916. He admitted that a single line of springs connecting the rocker arms with all the cylinders and holding one end only in position, as described in the specifications, did not work satisfactorily, and that before applying for a patent he substituted and practiced the method of so placing springs as to hold in position both ends of the rocker arms of each cylinder separately. Long before 1916 coil springs had been used on the shafts between rocker arms. The purpose of their use was the principal question in dispute. There was testimony for appellant that the purpose was only to utilize the springs as spacers, and that before his invention they had never been used with the idea of making them strong enough to hold the rocker arms securely in position. On the other hand witnesses for appellee testified that beginning at least as early as 1914, and continuously thereafter, coil springs had been used not only as spacers but to accomplish the very purpose claimed by appellant, by the Mason Motor Company, by the Willys-Overland Company, by the Sterling Company, and by the Teetor-Hartley Company. They produced parts of motors to substantiate their testimony. Part of a motor used by the Sterling Company prior to appellant's alleged...
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...the chemical, and the facts shown in the record sustain the finding that Kroeber's Claim 5 did not show invention. Cf. Kessler v. Buick Motor Company, 5 Cir., 64 F.2d 599. As to the Sutherland patent the case is different. The record shows that prior to the issuance of the patent in suit a ......