PALTIER CORPORATION v. Daniels-McCray Lumber Co.

• Decision Date: 17 September 1957
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 9637.
• Citation: 154 F. Supp. 635
• Parties: The PALTIER CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. DANIELS-McCRAY LUMBER CO., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri

154 F. Supp. 635

The PALTIER CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. DANIELS-McCRAY LUMBER CO., Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 9637.

United States District Court W. D. Missouri, W. D.

September 17, 1957.

Morrison, Hecker, Buck, Cozad & Rogers, Kansas City, Mo. (Carlson, Pitzner, Hubbard & Wolfe, Chicago, Ill., with them on the brief), for plaintiff.

Fishburn & Gold, Kansas City, Mo., for defendant.

R. JASPER SMITH, District Judge.

This is an action for infringement of United States Letters Patent No. 2,621,879, issued December 16, 1952, on application of Eugene T. Lundeen, and transferred by appropriate assignment to plaintiff. In this proceeding we refer to it as the Lundeen patent. By pre-trial order the issue of damages has been separated and held in abeyance until the questions of validity and infringement are completely determined. Jurisdiction is conceded.

Plaintiff is a manufacturer of materials storage equipment including "The Flexible Paltier," a pallet stacking structure claimed to be protected by the patent in suit. Defendant, in association with one Paul Darling of Kansas City, Missouri, manufactures and sells pallet stacking equipment which it is claimed infringes the patent in suit.

At this stage of the case two issues are presented: i. e., whether or not it required patentable invention to produce the structure of the patent in suit; and whether or not defendant has infringed. Manifestly, if patentable invention is not required to produce the device, the entire claim of plaintiff is terminated.

The patent in suit is entitled "Pallet Support," and "The present invention relates in general to multiple shelf or platform structures which may be quickly assembled and disassembled, finding particular, but by no means exclusive utility in an arrangement for supporting and stacking a plurality of pallets or platforms such as those used in warehouses, supply depots, and similar places for storage or handling purposes."

The evidence indicates that the main purpose of a pallet structure is to make possible the efficient utilization of warehouse and other storage space by storing one commodity on top of the other and readily to separate those commodities, especially for commodities which will not support a load with their own weight and which by their nature must be easily removable. Thus in the field of materials handling, a pallet is a structure to permit storing of materials and allow the stacking of materials in vertical tiers. Pallets for storing and moving materials were first used some 37 years ago. Fork lift trucks for handling and stacking them have been available for about the same length of time. For maximum efficient use, the structure for stacking pallets is required to provide safety, speed of operation, flexibility and versatility to handle varieties of materials at low initial and operating cost, and to utilize to the maximum extent expensive warehouse space.

Pallets generally have a load-supporting platform usually referred to as a "deck" with spaces or runners underneath, so that trucks having a fork-member, usually referred to as "fork-lift trucks" with arms that are moved between the runners or through the spaces under the deck or pallet, may move or lift the loaded pallet, and stack several pallets in a tier.

The Lundeen device discloses and claims a pallet support which is combined with a load-supporting platform, and the structure is referred to as a "stacking pallet." This structure includes a load-supporting platform which may be a conventional wood pallet or of other material, which has attached to it substantially conical shaped members under each corner, with sleeves or openings through the platform and into the conical shaped member so that there may be inserted into the openings or sockets at the corners tubular posts extending upwardly, with receiving members having upwardly opening cone-shaped cavities attached to the top of the tubular posts to receive the cone members on the bottom of a platform stacked thereon. The cone members form male and female members with the sides substantially larger than the posts themselves, and the cone members nest and have coacting conical bearing surfaces. The cone structures provide self-centering in the stacking of the structures; the engagement of the cones resists relative lateral movement, and imparts lateral stability to the stacked structure. From time to time after sale of the patented structures was commenced various changes in manufacture method were initiated by plaintiff, but the basic method of operation and manufacture was continued.

The patented structure gives versatility, safety and speed of use, and combined with low cost and efficient use of storage space satisfactorily fulfills the requirements of the materials handling field for equipment of this type. The evidence shows that the structure is not only easy to assemble and disassemble, being held together merely by nesting of convex and concave members, but permits increased loads to be carried by the posts, at the same time absorbing shocks and side thrusts without damage to the parts or risk of toppling over.

Prior to 1948 there was not available any pallet stacking structure comparable to the patented structure. Industry resorted to haphazard and unsafe stacking methods, or to more expensive structures which lacked flexibility. This lack of pallet stacking structures capable of meeting the needs of the industry existed even though pallets and lift trucks for stacking them had been used for some twenty-eight years prior to the application for the patent in suit.

Defendant's device is substantially similar. It has a male cone member with the base of the cone welded to a plate which is secured to the bottom of the pallet at the corners. A flat plate is secured to the top of the pallet at the corners, and the plates have holes aligning with holes in the pallet to receive tubular posts extending upwardly. A cone-shaped member having an upwardly opening conical recess is attached to the upper ends of the posts. The model in evidence shows that the recessed cone member (female) has an included angle between the inclined sides that is greater than the included angle of the male cone members, and it is this feature which furnishes a basis of defendant's claim of lack of infringement. Fundamentally, however, defendant predicates its defense on the premise that plaintiff's device shows lack of patentable invention.

Without in any way attempting to detail their exact nature as they appear in the patent, generally six claims are made for the patented device. Claim 1 calls for a pallet structure having separable bearing members with conical complementary bearing surfaces; claim 2 is directed to a pallet structure having posts with separable bearing members arranged relative thereto with the bearing surfaces complementary and outside of a plane perpendicular to the axis of the posts. Claims 3, 4, 5 and 6 are each directed to a pallet structure with posts and separable bearing members arranged relative thereto, the separable bearing members being substantially concave and convex and having complementary bearing surfaces specified in such a manner that there must be bearing engagement between the sides of the bearing members as distinguished from bearing engagement in a plane perpendicular to the axis of the posts.

The evidence shows that defendant's device meets the tests laid down by each of these claims.

In its efforts to show lack of patentable invention, defendant introduced some eighteen prior art patents, the structure of a bird bath, and evidence of a structure manufactured and sold by Mr. Darling consisting of a platform with sockets for receiving posts, to the tops of which had been welded flat plates which were used as supports for platforms stacked on top of them. None of them are particularly pertinent in this case, and do not, in my opinion, demonstrate that existing prior art destroys the element of invention. Rather, the array of patents offered by defendant as prior art attests that the prior art is as barren as the Patent Office itself found it to be, and evidences the continued efforts by those skilled in the art to produce a suitable pallet stacking structure. Defendant urges three prior art patents as being particularly pertinent. They are Gifford patent No. 1,490,665, Vrabcak Patent No. 2,544,743, and British patent No. 188,785, for Silcock. Of these, the only one offering any similarity — a similarity which is not sufficient to overcome the presumption of validity existing for the patented structure —...