National Transformer Corp. v. France Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 03 August 1954
• Docket Number: No. 11717.,11717.
• Citation: 215 F.2d 343
• Parties: NATIONAL TRANSFORMER CORP. et al. v. FRANCE MFG. CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

215 F.2d 343 (1954)

NATIONAL TRANSFORMER CORP. et al. v. FRANCE MFG. CO.

No. 11717.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

August 3, 1954.

John Howard Joynt, Washington, D. C. (Richey, Watts, Edgerton & McNenny, H. F. Schneider, Cleveland, Ohio, of counsel), for appellants.

Albert R. Teare, Cleveland, Ohio (Bates, Teare & McBean, Jerome F. Kramer, Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief), for appellee.

Before SIMONS, Chief Judge, and ALLEN and McALLISTER, Circuit Judges.

McALLISTER, Circuit Judge.

Appellants brought suit for specific performance to require the France Manufacturing Company to carry out its obligations under a patent license agreement; to account for its operations thereunder; and to pay royalties required by its terms. They also asked for a declaratory judgment determining whether the above mentioned patent license agreement had been canceled by appellee; and, in case the court found that the contract had been canceled, then, they sought a decree enjoining appellee from infringing appellants' patents by use, sale, or offers of sale, and for an accounting of profits resulting from the infringement.

Appellee contended that the license agreement had been canceled; that the agreement was illegal as being contrary to public policy, in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1-7, 15 note; that appellee had been guilty of no infringement; and that the patents embraced in the license agreement were invalid for anticipation, and for want of invention. The district court, in an opinion, and in findings of fact and conclusions of law, held that the license agreement was void for ambiguity and failure to reflect a meeting of the minds of the parties; that if it were not ambiguous, it had been canceled as claimed by appellee; that it was violative of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; that there had been no infringement; and that the patents in suit were invalid for anticipation and want of invention.

We shall discuss, in order, the issue of the validity of the five patents in suit; the question whether the license contract was void for ambiguity; the claim of appellee that the license agreement was canceled; the contention that the license agreement violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act because of price-fixing provisions; the right of appellee, who was a licensee under the contract, to attack the validity of the patents; and the question of damages.

The patents in suit cover: a luminescent or fluorescent gaseous discharge tube lighting system, employing hot cathode fluorescent tubes, in which system provision is made for short-circuiting the flilamentary cathode of the tubes; such a system, in which the tubes are positioned in pairs of sockets and connected in circuit with the operating transformer primary and secondary windings, so that removal of a tube will disconnect the primary winding from the supply line, and will also disconnect the secondary winding; an improved fluorescent tube lighting system and an improved power unit; a form of fluorescent tube lighting system and apparatus; and the complete fixture including tubes, reflector, sockets, power unit, and necessary connections.¹

The most important contribution, according to appellants, which their patents provide, consists of a fluorescent tube lighting system which will start instantly upon being switched on, in contrast with prior systems where the lighting of the tubes occurred only after several seconds' elapse from the time they were switched on. It is, moreover, submitted that appellants' patents have, in addition, accompanying advantages, including the elimination of starting switches, less and cheaper maintenance, operation at lower room, or outdoor, temperature, and the absence of stroboscopic effect and flicker, as well as safety in operation, through the use of low voltages, together with the advantage that when one of a pair of tubes is disconnected or removed from its socket, the circuit is broken, and danger of electric shock when changing tubes is greatly lessened.

The subject matter of the patents in issue, therefore, involves a fluorescent or luminescent tube lighting system and apparatus.

The fluorescent or luminescent tube now in general use is a gaseous discharge tube consisting of a glass tubular envelope, with its interior surface coated with fluorescent salts, filled with an inert gas under a certain pressure, and with a pair of electrodes, one in each end of the tube. The electric current from an outside source passes through the gas from one electrode to the other. The inert gas used is argon, and a small amount of mercury is also placed in the tube. The mercury becomes vaporized when the discharge starts in the argon gas. Since mercury has a lower ionization voltage than argon, the mercury takes over the entire discharge. An electrode, as is well known, is a terminal of the electric source, or, it may be said, of the terminals of the conductor by which the current leaves, and by which it enters the tube. Electrodes may be composed of wire filaments, plates, or other conducting objects.

Electrodes are designated either anodes or cathodes. An anode is the electrode through which the current passes to the cathode. In alternating current, which is used with fluorescent lighting, the direction of the flow of the electric current is periodically reversed, so that the electrodes at each end of the tube exchange the roles of anode and cathode with each alternation of the current with which they are supplied.

A description of the way in which the fluorescent tube lights or furnishes illumination requires some discussion of electrical phenomena. It is the theory, or working hypothesis, of science that all matter is composed of atoms; that all atoms contain a nucleus and one, or many electrons; that an electron revolves about the nucleus of the atom similar to the way of heavenly bodies in the planetary system. Different substances have either a positive or negative charge. Substances with like charges repel, while those with unlike charges attract each other. An electron is practically a pure negative charge of electricity. The anode is the positive electrode through which the electric current, on its way to the other pole, or cathode, enters the electrolyte, which, in the case of the fluorescent tube, is the inert gas within the tube. Since the anode is the positive pole or terminal, the electrons, being negative charges of electricity, are attracted to the anode and flow through the tube toward it from the cathode during the time when an electric current is passing between the electrodes; and particles, called ions, with a positive charge, are attracted to the negative cathode.

As far as this case is concerned, there may be said to be two types of operating fluorescent tube lighting, the hot cathode, and the cold cathode. Appellants' patents operate as cold cathode, and they refer to the hot cathode operation as the prior practice, in order to demonstrate how they differ from it and what contribution they have made to the art.

We shall, then, briefly describe the hot cathode fluorescent lamp, how it operates, and what happens in its operation; and compare it with cold cathode starting.

In a hot cathode fluorescent lamp, the two ends of each electrode are connected to the pins in the bases of the lamp. When the circuit switch is closed, current flows though the electrodes. The current warms the electrodes and lowers the required starting voltage. A bimetallicthermal automatic starter or switch is inserted in the wire connecting the electrodes. After a few seconds, the circuit is automatically broken at the starter. A surge of current at somewhat greater than the line voltage, which has meanwhile been built up by the ballast,² is then sufficient to leap the gap and start a discharge through the argon. The discharge is quickly taken over by the mercury. After the stage of warming or preheating the electrodes, above mentioned, the starter automatically opens, and remains open as long as the lamp is operating satisfactorily. If the lamp does not light the first time, the starter circuit repeats its cycle until the lamp does light.

In hot cathode operation, when there is a surge of voltage between the electrodes in the fluorescent tube, certain activity takes place: The electrodes — in this case, wire filaments — are coated with a special material consisting of oxides which emit electrons copiously when heated. The electric current causes the electrodes to become heated and, accordingly, to emit electrons which become accelerated and thrown from the cathode along the length of the tube toward the opposite electrode. With alternating current, the electrons travel backward and forward throughout the tube, and this continual reversal in direction is due to the fact that each electrode becomes anode and cathode in turn, as the current alternates. As billions of the electrons are so accelerated, they come into collision with the atoms of the inert gas in the tube. Such an atom, if struck hard enough, will have one of its electrons knocked out of its system, which may be compared with a planetary system. The atom then has one less negative charge because of the loss of an electron and, as a result, has a net positive charge equal to the amount of the negative charge which it lost by the collision. However, the collision with the atom may not be sufficiently powerful actually to knock an electron completely out of its connection with the nucleus, but, instead, may cause it to jump out of the orbit in which it naturally revolves and ascend into a higher orbit. Yet, if this be the case, such a condition is so unstable that within a fraction of a millionth of a second, the electron which had jumped into the higher orbit falls back to the original normal unexcited phase.³ Whatever the case, whether the electron has been knocked out of its planetary system or whether it has jumped into a higher orbit and back again,...