Maschinenfabrik Rieter AG v. Greenwood Mills

• Decision Date: 23 March 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 69-824.
• Citation: 340 F. Supp. 1103
• Parties: MASCHINENFABRIK RIETER A. G., Plaintiff, v. GREENWOOD MILLS and Continental/Moss-Gordin, Inc., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina

340 F. Supp. 1103

MASCHINENFABRIK RIETER A. G., Plaintiff, v. GREENWOOD MILLS and Continental/Moss-Gordin, Inc., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 69-824.

United States District Court, D. South Carolina, Greenwood Division.

March 23, 1972.

Hugh A. Chapin, Kenyon & Kenyon, Reilly, Carr & Chapin, New York City, Thomas A. Evins, Butler, Means, Evins & Browne, Spartanburg, S.C., for plaintiff.

Thomas B. Van Poole, Mason, Fenwick & Lawrence, Washington, D.C., Howard L. Burns, Burns, McDonald, Bradford, Erwin & Few, Greenwood, S.C., for defendants.

ORDER

BLATT, District Judge.

Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law

This is a civil action under 35 U.S.C. §§ 271 and 281, for patent infringement of United States Letters Patent Number 3,029,477 (hereafter the '477 patent) entitled "AUTOMATIC CARDING PLANT". There is no question as to jurisdiction or venue. Defendants admitted in their Answers and Counterclaim that this Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a). Venue is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) as defendant, Greenwood Mills (hereafter "GREENWOOD") has a regular and established place of business within the District and its accused infringing installation at Joanna, South Carolina, is located within the District. As to defendant, Continental/Moss-Gordin, Inc. (hereafter "C/MG"), it submitted to the venue of this Court in its Motion to Intervene and its subsequent Answer and Counterclaim.

I. The Parties

Plaintiff, Maschinenfabrik Rieter A.G. (hereafter "RIETER"), filed its complaint on October 8, 1969 against Greenwood, seeking an injunctin against continued infringement by Greenwood's use of the C/MG card chute feeding system, an accounting for damages, and other relief. After extensions of time for answering, defendant, C/MG, moved to intervene. This motion was consented to by plaintiff and, by Court Order, C/MG intervened on May 19, 1970. By their answer, both defendants asserted that the patent in suit was invalid and not infringed and both counterclaimed for a declaratory judgment to that effect. At trial, defendant, C/MG, having fully indemnified Greenwood against any liability, presented the defense. Thus, the real parties in interest are Rieter and C/MG. At trial, counsel for plaintiff formally waived any claim of damages against Greenwood for the C/MG installation at the Joanna Plant of Greenwood.

Rieter is the assignee of the patent in suit from three joint inventors, Wildbolz, Binder and Staheli. The patent issued on April 17, 1962 based on application Serial Number 840,395, filed in the United States Patent Office on September 16, 1959. This application was based upon two Swiss applications, one of which, Serial Number 73,862, filed in Switzerland on June 1, 1959, was claimed as the priority date under 35 U.S.C. § 119 for claims 1 through 12 of the patent in suit. This date of June 1, 1959 is the date of invention for claims 1, 5, 6, 8 and 11 which are charged to be infringed in this case.

Rieter is a Swiss manufacturer of textile machinery including equipment manufactured under the patent involved in this lawsuit. It sells and services its equipment in the United States through American Rieter Co., a wholly owned subsidiary, located in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

C/MG, a Delaware corporation, having its principal place of business in Prattville, Alabama, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allied Products Corporation of Chicago, Illinois. Prior to 1966 when it entered into the manufacture of textile machinery, including the card chute feeding system accused of infringement in this suit, it manufactured cotton ginning equipment

II. The Background of the Technology Involved in this Lawsuit

A. Lap Feeding of Cards

The technology involved in this lawsuit concerns the feeding of carding machines in the process of yarn manufacture in a textile spinning mill. Carding is an intermediate step in the spinning process which begins by the delivery of synthetic¹ fiber or ginned cotton in baled form to the opening room of the mill where the bales are unstrapped and fed into hopper feeders for delivery to opening and cleaning equipment. This cleaned and fluffy opened cotton must be transported to and delivered to the next processing machine, i. e., the carding machine or card. Ideally, the cotton when fed to the card must have a uniform compactness, or weight per unit length.

The conventional method of card feeding which has been used for a great many years is by means of a lap² which is fed to the cards. This is accomplished by transporting the opened cotton from the opening equipment to a large and complex machine called a picker. This machine serves to further open and clean the cotton and then forms a relatively compact lap which is rolled into a large lap roll, severed from the picker and transported to the receiving end of the card where it is spliced by hand into the card feed when the preceding lap has run out.

The card receives the batt or lap at a relatively slow rate and combs, or aligns, the individual fibers to form a fine, delicate web at the output end of the card. This fine web is funnelled into a so-called trumpet which shapes this web into a round sliver having a diameter of approximately ½ inch. The sliver is then coiled into cans which are then transported to the input end of a drawing frame which serves to attenuate and align the fibers in the sliver. In addition to being drawn, the sliver is passed through roving and ring spinning operations which serve to further align and twist the fibers to produce yarn having the desired tensile strength and appearance. Normally one (1) inch of sliver from a card yields approximately 100 inches of finished yarn.

B. The Recognized Problems in Lap Feeding

It was well recognized by both textile machinery manufacturers and by spinning mill operators and personnel that there were many inherent problems involved in lap feeding and the use of the picker to form a lap for feeding to the card. Ideally, the material fed to the card should be as opened as possible. However, in the picker after the fibers are opened and cleaned it is necessary to physically compress and bind the fibers together to form the lap because of the need to transport the material to the card. This compressed lap is undesirable in many instances as feed material for the card as it may produce non-uniformities in the resulting yarn and can serve to damage the card.

Some other typical problems associated with the picker and lap feeding are the skill required to join consecutive laps, the unhealthy and dangerous working environment, costs of equipment and personnel, irregularities formed in the lap during the formation of the compressed picker lap and the subsequent manual handling thereof, waste formed during the feeding of consecutive laps at the feed end of the cards, sliver breaks caused by faulty joining of the laps, curliness and neps formed during the opening and picking, and the lack of consistent control in this entire process.

The necessity for uniformity in width, thickness and compactness of the material fed to the cards has always been of critical importance. If the material is uniform in weight per unit length then the sliver weight per unit length will be correspondingly uniform and, hence, the yarn produced will be uniform. On the other hand, if the material fed to the cards is not uniform, then the sliver produced will vary in uniformity and this non-uniformity will be either present in the yarn produced or may require further expensive and time consuming process steps to remove the non-uniformities.

Prior to the invention of the patent in suit, textile machinery manufacturers had long recognized these difficulties and problems and various attempts had been made to solve them. Textile machinery researchers, however, concerned with these problems in the 1950's, concentrated on improving the operation of the pickers and the picker lap feeding operation. From time to time, some research had been done and systems proposed to feed cards directly and thus eliminate the picker and lap feeding of cards. All of these attempts, however, were commercially unsuccessful. Prior to the invention covered by the patent in suit, no commercially workable pneumatic or mechanical chute feeding system had been devised to eliminate the picker or picker lap and the inherent problems created by the use thereof.

C. Synopsis of the Operation of the Rieter and C/MG Systems

The C/MG direct card chute feeding system installed at Joanna and the Rieter Aerofeed³ system installed at Judson Mills of Deering Milliken, both of which this Court observed in operation, pneumatically transport the opened cotton from the opening equipment through a main supply duct extending over each line of cards (8 cards in a line at Joanna Mills and 10 cards in a line at Judson Mills). The receiving end of each card is connected to the main supply duct by a vertical chute or depositing duct which receives cotton from the supply duct. In the depositing ducts the cotton is compacted to form a uniform endless batt⁴ which is continuously fed to the card. By the direct card chute feeding system involved herein, the picker is eliminated.

The essence of the '477 patent in suit consisted in the direct feeding of a uniform batt to cards by the use of superatmospheric pressure to pneumatically convey cotton from the opening equipment through a horizontal supply duct and into the vertical depositing ducts or chutes. In each chute the superatmospheric pressure and the resultant pressure difference between the top and bottom of the chute produces controlled compaction of the cotton and insures that the weight per unit length of the resulting batt fed to the cards is uniform. By providing this superatmospheric pressure in both the horizontal supply duct and vertical chutes and this air pressure difference, significant necessary control of the uniformity of the material fed to the cards is assured and thus uniformity of...