McKee Door Company v. Forest Door Company

• Decision Date: 06 December 1960
• Docket Number: No. 13046.,13046.
• Parties: McKEE DOOR COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FOREST DOOR COMPANY, Inc., Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

284 F.2d 809 (1960)

McKEE DOOR COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FOREST DOOR COMPANY, Inc., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 13046.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

December 6, 1960.

Martin Bogot, Chicago, Ill., Edwin T. Bean, Buffalo, N. Y., Charles G. Chester, Chicago, Ill., Bean, Brooks, Buckley & Bean, Edwin T. Bean, Jr., Buffalo, N. Y., Martin, Craig, Chester & Sonnenschein, Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Thomas F. McWilliams, Chicago, Ill., Mann, Brown & McWilliams, Chicago, Ill., for appellee.

Before HASTINGS, Chief Judge, KNOCH, Circuit Judge, and GRUBB, District Judge.

HASTINGS, Chief Judge.

McKee Door Company, plaintiff-appellee, brought this action against Forest Door Company, Inc., defendant-appellant, charging infringement of Claims 1, 2, 3 and 6 of its McKee Patent No. 2,703,141 dated March 1, 1955. Defendant answered in denial and asserted invalidity. The overhead doors sold by defendant and alleged to infringe were manufactured by Morrison Steel Products, Inc. (Morrison), of Buffalo, New York, which assumed and paid for the defense of this litigation.

Following a bench trial, the district court entered findings of fact and conclusions of law favorable to plaintiff and a judgment holding the claims in issue to be valid and infringed, enjoined further infringement and referred the matter to a Master for determination of plaintiff's damages. This appeal followed.

The parties agree that the principal issue before us is whether the trial court erred in concluding that the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented in the McKee patent and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would not have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which such subject matter pertains. In the main, therefore, this appeal is limited to the narrow question of obviousness in view of the prior art.

There is also a related error based upon the finding that the patent claims in issue were infringed by the accused structures. However, defendant concedes that if the finding of validity is sustained, the McKee patent is infringed by the Morrison device.

Plaintiff is the owner of the patent in suit by assignment. The patent application (Serial No. 637,131) was filed December 24, 1945. All the claims were rejected by the Patent Office as not patentable over combinations of the teachings of four prior art United States patents cited in the application. Thereafter, pursuant to 35 U.S.C.A. § 145, suit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by the inventor and plaintiff-assignee against the Commissioner of Patents. The complaint alleged that the Patent Office was in error in refusing to grant a patent upon the McKee application and sought a judgment authorizing issuance of the patent. After a trial in that court before the Honorable F. Dickinson Letts, findings of fact and conclusions of law favorable to plaintiffs were entered by Judge Letts with a judgment authorizing the granting of letters patent to plaintiffs. The patent was issued on March 1, 1955.

The application recites that the "invention relates to improvements in what is commonly known as overhead doors, extra clearance overhead doors and vertical lift doors, designed to close and provide openings in garages, service stations, industrial buildings, warehouses and the like, especially where a tight closure is desired. The doors are formed of panels or other design sections, which are hinged together and provided with guide rollers and tapered guide tracks. When opened, the door moves upwardly and away from the frame of the doorway to conveniently provide the maximum opening for entrance or exit to the building."

The application further states that the object of the invention is "to provide a simple and effective adjustable roller or guide bracket in combination with a taper track construction whereby the door regardless of height of sections, can be properly and accurately spaced so as to press the door firmly against the frame of the doorway at all points to give a perfectly tight fit when the door is closed and in which such contact is quickly relieved when raising the door in order to reduce frictional resistance so that the door can be opened and closed with minimum effort."

Claim 1 is typical and reads:

"In a sectional overhead door structure having a doorjamb, substantially vertically disposed tracks inclined relative to the doorjamb, said tracks being closer to the plane of the doorjamb at the bottom than at the top, and a sectional door movable along and guided by said tracks and adapted to engage said jamb; a plurality of spaced brackets each comprising an anchor portion secured to the door, a guide portion having laterally offset means rollers movably to engage a track, said guide portion being adjustably mounted on said anchor portion for movement to different fixed positions whereby the distance between said door and said offset means may be varied, and means for holding said guide portion in adjusted position on said anchor portion."

The findings of fact are not contested and reflect the following relevant factual situation. For a period from at least 1928 to 1945 plaintiff and five of its competitors were the principal producers of overhead panel doors. The industry had been unable to solve certain problems encountered in the various doors on the market. These problems were properly summarized by the trial court in its Finding 19, as follows:

"(a) Friction between the door panels and the door stop when vertical tracks were used and the doors were installed with an initial snug fit.

"(b) Expensive installation problems of tapered stops and tapered strips, and at times the tapering of the side edges of the door panels to avoid friction and yet achieve a snug fit upon closure.

"(c) The lack of any ready adjustability after a snug fit door installation when vertical tracks were used.

"(d) The necessity for fabricating and stocking many different size fixed brackets and the consequent expense attributed thereto when inclined tracks were used to avoid the friction problem.

"(e) The limitation with respect to the use of varying panel heights and the height of door openings with the use of inclined tracks, unless a very large number of fixed distance brackets were used in association with an inclined track."

It was clearly shown that the improvement disclosed by the McKee application afforded a remedy for defects in doors of this type and solved the foregoing problems which had confronted the overhead door industry for many years and produced new and beneficial results never before attained. McKee obtained these results by a new combination and arrangement of known elements. He accomplished this through a combination of an inclined track with an anchor portion to be secured to the rear of a door panel with a guide portion carrying roller means adjustably mounted with a clamp on the anchor portion.

Finding 6 adequately describes the McKee improvement as follows:

"6. McKee Patent No. 2,703,141 relates to improvements in overhead vertifical lift doors, and this patent discloses an overhead door structure formed of hinged panels adapted to abut a doorjamb or door stop. The door is movably guided from open to closed positions by guide means associated with an inclined track. The panels of the door have secured thereto at the upper inner side edges brackets which comprise an anchor portion secured to the door panel and a guide portion adjustably mounted on the anchor portion. The guide portion carries an offset roller to engage the inclined track. The guide portion is adjustably mounted on the anchor portion, permitting movement of the guide portion to different fixed positions whereby the distance between

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