Moore Filter Co. v. Tonopah-Belmont Development Co.

• Decision Date: 24 February 1912
• Citation: 195 F. 530
• Parties: MOORE FILTER CO. v. TONOPAH-BELMONT DEVELOPMENT CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

195 F. 530

MOORE FILTER CO. v. TONOPAH-BELMONT DEVELOPMENT CO.

United States District Court, D. New Jersey.

February 24, 1912

Gifford & Bull, for complainant.

William H. Kenyon and Harold Binney, for defendant.

RELLSTAB District Judge.

The complainant by mesne assignments is the owner of the letters patents No. 748,088, for improvement in filtering system, and No. 764,486, for improvement in filtering processes issued to George Moore December 29, 1903, and July 5, 1904 respectively. The bill alleges that the inventions covered by said letters patents are capable of conjoint, as well as separate, use, and that the defendant so used them. At the close of complainant's prima facie case, the charge of infringement based on the apparatus patent (No. 748,088) was abandoned. The defenses are the usual ones of invalidity and infringement.

The patentee in his application for the process patent, No 764,486, states that:

'My present invention relates to the filtration of metal bearing slimes and the like; and it consists of certain novel processes particularly pointed out in the claims.' The patentee illustrates a set of elements which he says may be employed for carrying out his process. Figures 1 and 3 of which are here given.

(Image Omitted)

Fig. 1 represents a longitudinal section through a tank illustrating a filtering device therein capable of carrying out such process, and Fig. 3 represents a diagrammatic view of elements ordinarily employed for carrying out the same process. With reference to the carrying out of his process the patent states:

'Although in the accompanying drawings I have disclosed a particular set of elements capable of carrying out my improved process, it will be understood that the said process may as well be carried out by any other elements capable of completing the steps to be described; the disclosure in the drawings being given as one illustration of complete means for carrying out the process.

'In carrying out the process with the means disclosed in the accompanying drawings adapted particularly for use in connection with the slimes of precious metals, I introduce a solution to be filtered into a suitable tank 1, in which I place a filtering device or means 2, in the present instance made up of a series of filter plates communicating with a common discharge tube 3. A flexible or other suitable tube 4 connects the tube 3 with any preferred form of hydraulic pump 5 and compressed air pump 5a, and the filtering means 2 is permitted to remain within the tank 1 until the solid matter within the liquid being filtered has coated the walls of the filtering device to the desired thickness-- say, for example, about three-quarters of an inch or more in most cases, but varying somewhat with the character of the slimes which are being handled-- and then the same is lifted, as by pulley-and-cable mechanisms 6, out of and away from the tank, and the pump 5 stopped and pump 5a operated so as to apply air pressure to the back of the canvas or to pass a current of air or cleansing current in an opposite direction to the movement of the liquid in the prior step, whereby the solid matter collected by the filtering device 2 will be discharged therefrom. However, this cleansing step of the process need not be taken until an intermediate auxiliary step has been performed, which consists in introducing the element 2, after having been coated with the solids, into a tank 7 of water, the drawing or sucking operation of pump 5 being continued while the element 2 is being subjected to the said water bath. When this step is employed, the next succeeding is the operation just described. It will be obvious that the water bath may be employed or not, as desired, the same being preferable when the filter is used for filtering precious ores, the said step tending to wash out the remaining metal held in solution or solvent thereof within the solids coating the filtering device.

In order to effectively discharge the incrusted slimes from the filter by the agency of compressed air, it is important that the slimes be in the form of a compact layer of requisite resistance and of sufficient thickness, because otherwise, when the air pressure is applied, portions only of the slimes are blown off, thereby relieving or reducing the air pressure, and rendering it ineffective for the removal of those slimes which remain and necessitating the use of other means-- such as scrapers, brushes, and washing-- for the complete cleaning of the filter surface. This difficulty is wholly overcome in my process by immersing the filter into the tank containing the slimes in suspension and depositing them in the manner described, the effect of which is to automatically deposit the slimes in a homogeneous layer, as will be readily understood. Hence when the slimes have been thus deposited to the requisite thickness the compressed air does not blow holes in the layer of slimes and only partially cleans the filter, but it strips off the entire layer of slimes and effectively cleans the filter without the use of auxiliary cleansing mechanism.'

Claims 4, 5, and 10 alone are involved in this suit. They are as follows:

'4. A filtering process comprising submerging a filtering medium in a material to be filtered, drawing the liquid being filtered from said material through said medium until a deposit of solids is formed upon the medium, removing the medium from the material being filtered, further impoverishing the solids by a cleansing operation, and removing the solids from the medium by passing a cleansing current through said medium.

'5. A filtering process comprising submerging a filtering medium in the material to be filtered, drawing the liquid being filtered from said material through said medium, removing the medium while continuing the drawing action, passing a cleansing fluid through the medium, and then passing a cleansing current through said medium.'

'10. A filtering process comprising submerging a filtering medium a plurality of times in a plurality of baths including the material to be filtered, effecting a drawing action through the medium while thus submerging said medium, and then cleansing the medium.' The process is for the purpose of recovering the metal contained in metal-bearing slimes; i.e., a mixture of pulverized ore with a liquid solvent. The recovery of such metal is accomplished by separating the liquid in which the metal has become dissolved from the refuse solid matter in which the metal was originally imprisoned. The defendant uses what is known in the trade as 'Butters Filter,' and in defending on the ground of noninfringement it says that its device is taught by the prior art. A large number of patents have been cited against the claims in suit, the applicability of many of which depends upon the scope of the filtering art covered by such claims.

The claims in question by their terms are not limited to the metallurgical art, and are broad enough to embrace the filtration of liquids carrying any kind of solids, whether the purpose is to recover the liquid or the solids carried therein. The specifications, however, point to, if they do not expressly limit, the process to the treatment of metal bearing slimes. Several times while the application for this patent was pending in the Patent Office, the commissioner suggested that apt words be used to limit the process to the metallurgical art, and in which the applicant acquiesced by amending the descriptive part of his specifications; but in the final rewriting of the claims the particular claims in suit were so phrased as to enlarge the scope of such claims beyond such art. In my consideration of the claims, however, in view of my conclusion that the defendant's process does not infringe complainant's, I shall refer only to such cited patents as are limited or clearly analogous to the metallurgical art.

Neither complainant's nor defendant's process has anything to do with the preparation of the slimes to be filtered, nor with the precipitation of such metal from the metal-bearing liquid after its abstraction from the solids; but only with the recovery of such metal-bearing liquid from such solids.

The steps of Moore's process as set forth in the claims in suit, and read...