Pierce v. Hewlett-Packard Company, Civ. A. No. 54-260.
| Decision Date | 22 October 1954 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 54-260. |
| Citation | 125 F. Supp. 329 |
| Parties | George Washington PIERCE v. HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY and Paul G. Yewell, doing business as Yewell Associates. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
David Rines, Robert H. Rines and Rines & Rines, Boston, Mass., for plaintiff.
Fish, Richardson & Neave and W. R. Hulbert, Boston, Mass., H. L. Kirkpatrick, Boston, Mass., for defendant.
Plaintiff complains of the infringement of six patents, including claims 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, and 61 to 63 inclusive of patent No. 2,133,642. Defendant's answer among other prayers requests that this Court should declare invalid the cited patent.
Plaintiff moved for a preliminary injunction confined to defendant's asserted infringement of the claims just enumerated. He supported the motion by all the evidence he expects to offer in this case with respect to those claims. Defendant moved for a partial summary judgment declaring those claims invalid.
Both parties agree that if the Court of Appeals in American Communications Co., Inc., v. Pierce, 1 Cir., 208 F.2d 763, has adjudicated these enumerated claims void for double patenting, then this Court ought now to grant defendant's motion and deny plaintiff's motion. This is not because of estoppel by judgment — for there is no showing that the present defendant was privy to defendant in the earlier case. It is because this Court has before it all of plaintiff's testimony on the validity of these claims, this testimony corresponds with the testimony in the earlier case, and this Court should apply the principle of stare decisis.
What the parties disagree upon is the precise scope of the judgment rendered in the earlier case. Plaintiff contends that the Court of Appeals in the earlier case did not hold that the claims were invalid, but merely held that "patent No. 2,133,642 when read specifically on the accused combined transmitting and receiving systems discloses no invention distinct and separate from that of patent No. 1,789,496." Page 769. This argument is certainly plausible, but I reject it for the following reasons.
Plaintiff's contention selects a particular phrase from, but ignores the main thrust of, the Court of Appeals' opinion. That opinion, as a whole, shows that the Court ruled that the enumerated claims were invalid for double patenting. At pages 767-768 Judge Hartigan pointed out that in claim 2 of patent No. 1,789,496, issued in 1931, plaintiff had set forth a specific application to a "combined transmitting and receiving system" of the Pierce crystal controlled oscillator used in an electric circuit, and that in the enumerated claims of patent No. 2,133,642, issued seven years later, plaintiff had set forth the same invention in generic form. The learned judge cited and relied upon familiar cases...
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Pierce v. International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.
...1, 1951 against the American Communications Company, a customer of I T & T. In early 1954 Pierce next sued Hewlett-Packard Co., Pierce v. Hewlett-Packard Co., D.C., 125 F.Supp. 329, raising much the same issues, and shortly thereafter he similarly sued the Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., ("Ma......
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Bank of Lincolnwood v. Federal Leasing, Inc.
...on its own motion. The judgment was entered in favor of the defendant on a defense of release. Finally, in Pierce v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 125 F.Supp. 329 (D.Mass.1954) (Wyzanski, J.) aff'd on other grounds, 220 F.2d 531 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 350 U.S. 833, 76 S.Ct. 69, 100 L.Ed. 744 (195......
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Pierce v. Allen B. Du Mont Laboratories, Inc.
...111 F.Supp. 181, reversed American Communications Co., Inc., v. Pierce, 1 Cir., 1953, 208 F.2d 763; Pierce v. Hewlett-Packard Company, D.C.Mass.1954, 125 F.Supp. 329, affirmed 1 Cir., 1955, 220 F.2d 531; Pierce v. American Communications Company, D.C.Mass.1958, 159 F.Supp. 943; Pierce v. Am......
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Pierce v. Aeronautical Communications Equipment
...in which the two-electrode piezoelectric crystal was used in the combination. In the other case, the district court in Pierce v. Hewlett-Packard Company, 125 F.Supp. 329, granted defendant's motion for summary judgment, declaring the above claims of patent No. 2,133,642 invalid. The Court o......