National Tube Co. v. Mark
| Decision Date | 25 July 1914 |
| Docket Number | 2417. |
| Citation | 216 F. 507 |
| Parties | NATIONAL TUBE CO. v. MARK et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
D Anthony Usina, of New York City and Charles C. Linthicum, of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
Charles Neave, of New York City and James K. Bakewell, of Pittsburg Pa., for appellees.
Before KNAPPEN and DENISON, Circuit Judges, and COCHRAN, District judge.
This is the usual patent infringement suit, brought by appellant, as plaintiff in the court below, and based upon patent No 888,984, issued May 26, 1908, to Charles Fell for 'apparatus for rifling pipes or tubes. ' Pipes used for the transmission of liquids had always been constructed with as smooth an inner surface as possible, in order to minimize the friction. It developed that in the long-distance carrying of the heavy viscous oils of California, the adhesion of the oil to the inner surface of the pipe was a serious obstacle. In 1904 Isaacs and Speed made an ingenious discovery. They found that a film of water interposed between the pipe and the oil would remove the trouble, that if a little water was put in with the oil and the whole liquid given a rotary motion, the resulting centrifugal force would throw the water out against the pipe and create the desired water film, and that sufficient rotary motion could be induced by rifling the pipe, so that when the contents were pumped through, giving primarily a longitudinal motion, there would be induced a secondary spiral motion. They utilized their discovery by a method patent, not now involved, and by an apparatus or device for rifling pipe. This was designed for use in the field, after the pipe was manufactured in the ordinary way, and it consisted of a rigid framework encircling the pipe and carrying four rollers or small wheels which projected inwardly radially to the pipe, and the innermost points of which were in a circle considerably smaller than the outer periphery of the pipe. It necessarily followed that as the pipe was passed through, four corresponding indentations would be made, resulting in ribs upon the inside of the pipe. These indenting wheels were so hung in the surrounding frame that their axes were not parallel to the corresponding diameter of the pipe, but were at an angle of, say, 20 degrees therefrom. It followed that the pipe, as it passed through lengthwise, would slowly rotate, and that the resulting ribs, grooves, or depressions on the inside of the pipe would be helical instead of longitudinal. This invention received distinct commercial approval, but the difficulty and expense of handling pipe in this way were considerable, and application was made to plaintiff, a large manufacturer, to produce and sell pipe in that form at its factory. The natural query was whether pipe could be put into that shape by or in connection with the original drawing and rolling process, and while it was hot and comparatively plastic; and, if so, how that could be done. These questions were submitted to Fell, plaintiff's superintendent, and the patent in suit is his answer.
Fell built his invention upon a device very common in the rolling mill art, a pair of skewed rolls. These consist of an upper and a lower horizontal shaft, each carrying a roll with such concavity in its surface that the pipe may travel between the two, while moving longitudinally upon a line at right angles to a vertical plane halfway between the vertical planes of the two roll shafts; in other words, the upper and lower roll shafts, instead of being at right angles to the travel of the pipe, make complementary angles thereto of, e.g., 70 degrees and 110 degrees, the upper roll shaft having its left-hand end moved 20 degrees forward, and the lower one having its corresponding end moved 20 degrees backward from the right-angled position. Obviously, if the concavity in each roll was upon the are of a circle, this nonparallelism of the upper and lower roll shafts would so distort the opening that a circular pipe could not pass through, and in order to make this opening or 'pass' circular, when projected upon a plane at right angles to the pipe axis, and so suitable for the passage of circular pipe, it is necessary to make each concavity partially elliptical. Such 'skewed rolls' operate at the same time to forward and to rotate the pipe, and were in common use, particularly for straightening purposes. It occurred to Fell that by putting circumferential beads or ribs upon the concave faces of these rolls he could get the desired result. Experiment demonstrated that this was so. The difference between what Isaacs and Speed had done and what Fell did is made clear by the following sketches:
(Image Omitted)
Fell's patent has 14 claims; the bill alleged infringement of all. In the court below plaintiff relied upon nearly all, but in this court it practically confines itself to the first three; and we shall find it necessary to refer to the others only for the sake of applying the differentiation test, in order to determine the meaning of the first three. They are as follows:
We see no substantial distinction between these claims. The element added by the second claim, 'means for positively rotating both of the rolls,' is the statement of an element which, in some form, must be present to make the device independently operative; and the third claim merely uses different terms of description for the same rolls, so we may confine ourselves to the first claim.
The novelty of the broad result which Fell accomplished is not questioned; no one had ever before rifled pipe with a pair of skewed rolls carrying circumferential beads; upon this branch of the case, the only question is whether his solution required invention as distinguished from expert skill. There were in existence two classes of machines, more or less analogous. One was for corrugating hollow pipe; the other was for twisting solid bars. The first class is typified by Fife, No. 426,439, April 29, 1890. This consisted of two indenting rollers, upper and lower, upon skewed axes so that, as the tube was fed between them, they produced a helical indentation. The axes of the rolls were almost parallel with the axis of the pipe, whereby it resulted that the helix had a very low pitch, and the product was what would naturally be called a corrugated tube; but if there is any distinction between corrugating and rifling due to the pitch of the groove, Isaacs and Speed had bridged the gap by applying the same idea to rifling, except that they used four indenting rolls, and thus provided a pass within the circle struck through these four points, instead of through merely the two opposite contact points of Fife. The other class of devices was used for making twist drills, and is best typified by Denk, No. 761,880, June 7, 1904. He uses skewed rolls, each having one circumferential, large, high rib. The round bar to be twisted was first provided with two oppositely disposed large longitudinal grooves of about the same cross-section shape as the cross section of the circumferential rib on the rolls, and these grooves were made very deep, so that the two left only a comparatively thin web of the bar between them. As the rod is advanced through the skewed rolls, with the upper and lower ribs engaging the respective grooves, and as the rear end of the rod is gripped fast against rotation, it necessarily twists on this central web, and the result is a twist drill.
We are satisfied that Fell made a distinct and valuable advance, and one beyond the limits of mechanical skill, and that his first claim is valid. No one of the pipe corrugating devices had an indenting bead upon a roll, which roll conveyed a double motion to the pipe. In all these corrugating devices the parts which corresponded to, and were perhaps equivalent to, the indenting bead were carried upon a stationary pipe-inclosing framework. They were adaptations of the screw-cutting lathe. The idea that this indenting element could be carried circumferentially upon the surface of a roll is not disclosed by any of the corrugating patents, had not occurred to these inventors, and to us seems not obvious. If it did occur to one, it seems likely that the thought would be rejected because all these corrugating and indenting rollers pressed inwardly on a pressure line radial to the pipe; and, while the same thing would be true of one centrally located bead in the upper and lower rollers, this would produce only two grooves-- not enough for efficient rifling-- and as soon as the beads were put anywhere except in the center of the rolls the indenting pressure became tangential and not radial. That this apparently abnormal action would produce a satisfactory result in pipe of this character is due only to the fact that well-shaped grooves are not necessary, and that a slight indentation is sufficient.
The twist drill machine is, upon the whole, no closer. It has skewed feed rolls, carrying one circumferential bead, but...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Schiebel Toy & Novelty Co. v. Clark
... ... preferred and described in the specification ( National ... Tube Co. v. Marks, 216 F. 507, 133 C.C.A. 13, decided by ... this court July 25, 1914; Hoyt ... once acquiring jurisdiction under an act of Congress, say in ... a patent or trade-mark suit, may determine an issue of unfair ... competition, and this upon the principle that the ... ...
-
Donner v. Walgreen Co.
...v. Shoneberger (C. C.) 4 F. 635; Olds v. Brown (C. C.) 41 F. 698; Jewell Filter Co. v. Jackson (C. C. A.) 140 F. 340; National Tube Co. v. Mark (C. C. A.) 216 F. 507. Donner recognized that efficient depilatories had been made previously in the forms of powder, liquid, and lotion, and state......
-
Weber Electric Co. v. Union Electric Co.
... ... by the complainant against the National Gas & Electric ... Fixture Company in the United States District Court for the ... Southern ... v ... Falls City Woolen Mills, 209 F. 210, 126 C.C.A. 304; ... National Tube Co. v. Mark, 216 F. 507, 133 C.C.A ... Weber's ... structure did not enter an art ... ...
-
Veneer Machinery Co. v. Grand Rapids Chair Co.
... ... acceptance of the letters-patent. National Tube Co. v ... Mark, 216 F. 507, 521, 133 C.C.A. 13 (C.C.A. 6th Cir.), ... and C.C.A. decisions ... ...
-
The Doctrine of Equivalents: Becoming a Derelict on the Waters of Patent Law
...15, at 4-10. 27. Id. at 6. 28. Ex parte Shepler, 1903 Dec. Comm'r Pat. 17, 102 O.G. 468 (1902), quoted in full in Nat'l Tube Co. v. Mark, 216 F. 507, 519 n.3 (6th Cir. 1914). 29. Nat'l Tube, 216 F. at 520. 30. Unlike injunctions, however, patent claims are not punishable by contempt of cour......