Lewyt Corporation v. Health-Mor, 47 C 1518.
| Decision Date | 13 April 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 47 C 1518.,47 C 1518. |
| Citation | 84 F. Supp. 189 |
| Parties | LEWYT CORPORATION v. HEALTH-MOR, Inc., et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Chas. W. Hills, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.
Chas. F. Short, Jr., Howard A. Brundage, Benton Baker, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.
This is an action by plaintiff for a declaratory judgment to determine the validity of patent No. 2,198,568 issued to E. H. Yonkers, Jr., April 23, 1940, and patent No. 2,280,495 issued to E. F. Martinet, April 21, 1942. The complaint requested also the determination of the validity of another patent to Martinet, and included a charge of unfair competition but plaintiff has dismissed as to this charge and as defendant at the trial agreed that plaintiff's product did not infringe any of the claims of the other Martinet patent that patent was withdrawn from the action. Defendant Health-Mor filed a counter claim charging unfair competition.
The patents above mentioned covered alleged improvements in vacuum cleaners. Defendant Yonkers is the owner of Patent No. 2,198,568 under which Health-Mor has an exclusive license. Health-Mor is the owner of the Martinet patent in suit and is selling vacuum cleaners embodying the two patents, the machine being produced for it by a manufacturing concern. Plaintiff is manufacturing a cleaner which defendants contend infringes claims 2, 4, 7 and 8 of the Yonkers patent and claims 1 and 2 of the Martinet patent. Defendant Health-Mor's counter claim charge of unfair competition is based upon certain advertising of plaintiff and alleged "raiding" defendant's distribution organization.
Vacuum cleaners of various sorts have been on the market for a long time. The first in use, known as the "stick type" consists of a motor driven suction fan mounted on wheels and exhausting into a cloth bag attached to the stick. As the appliance is pushed over the floor the dirt laden air is sucked into the bag through an opening arranged for that purpose. The dirt remains and the air escapes through the pores of the bag. The next form is known as the tank type which consists of a cylinder mounted on runners which lies on the floor, having inside a motor driven exhaust fan and a cloth bag. As in the stick type the dirt laden air is sucked through a hose into the bag, the dirt remains and the air escapes through the pores of the bag. In both these types the bags must be emptied by the user, and a disadvantage of both is that a considerable amount of dirt adheres to the cloth and the bag must be cleaned frequently, a disagreeable task, or the dirt adhering to the sides will prevent the elimination of air and lessen the efficiency of the cleaner.
The third type known as the canister type appears not to have been marketed, at least to any considerable extent, until defendant Health-Mor commenced to sell it in 1937. It manufactured and sold a large number of the devices until the war stopped its operations in 1941. After the war it resumed operations and had sold, up to the time of trial, 150,000.
Plaintiff appeared on the field in competition with Health-Mor about July, 1947. Prior to that time it had manufactured and sold, sometimes engineered, various forms of equipment such as room air conditioning units, telephone switch boards, radar equipment, etc.
The canister type cleaner which both plaintiff and Health-Mor sell consists of a cylindrical dirt receiver shaped like a bucket or pail. In construction and appearance plaintiff's and Health-Mor cleaners are quite similar but there are certain differences which will be noted later.
Yonkers in his specifications states that his objects were to construct a filter which tends to clean itself and wherein the main body of the dirt is not sucked up against the filter surface, with the result that the filter remains in a clean condition; also to produce a filter medium more efficient than fabric in that a greater surface is accessible to the passage of air and with air passages so fine as to prevent any but the finest dust from passing through. He desired also a filtering medium so cheap and so readily replaceable as to render the frequent changes of the filter easy and cheap.
To accomplish his purpose he devised a form of construction consisting of a smooth surfaced porous paper filter, conical in form, attached to the rim of the dirt receptacle and extending downwardly into it. To prevent breakage of the paper filter he provided a perforated metal cone also attached to the rim of the receptacle extending downwardly within the paper cone.
The receptacle, he stated, had an opening on the side for an air inlet and the air sucked in is given a rotary motion by means of a nozzle which is so designed that no direct blast of air impinges on the filter element but a flat stream travels around and substantially parallel with the filter thus preventing solid particles travelling at a high rate of speed from tearing the paper. The whirling motion of the air around the filter, separates the light from the heavy particles, the dirt settles in the receptacle while the air passes through the filter and the perforated screen and out of the machine through openings provided for that purpose.
The machine is provided of course with the necessary motor and fan and its general construction is shown by the figure below:
The paper filter is indicated by No. 60, the perforated metal screen by No. 55, the opening into the pan by No. 11 and the nozzle by No. 12.
The principle feature of his design as I gather it from the specifications are (1) the use of paper as a filtering medium, (2) the conical form of the filter, (3) a perforated metal screen within the cone to prevent the paper from being ruptured by the air suction, and (4) a nozzle so arranged that no direct blast of air impinges upon the filter but takes a circular path around and generally parallel to the surface of the filter.
Defendant charges that plaintiff has infringed claims 2, 4, 7 and 8 of the patent. These claims read as follows:
2. In a suction cleaner, a housing having a dust compartment in the bottom thereof, a generally conical air filter forming the top cover of said...
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