Radiator Specialty Co. v. Buhot
| Decision Date | 27 February 1930 |
| Docket Number | No. 4215.,4215. |
| Citation | 39 F.2d 373 |
| Parties | RADIATOR SPECIALTY CO. v. BUHOT. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
E. Hayward Fairbanks, of Philadelphia, Pa. (Paul B. Eaton, of Charlotte, N. C., and John Q. Frey, of Newark, N. J., of counsel), for appellant.
Paul H. Wendel, of Trenton, N. J., for appellee.
Before WOOLLEY and DAVIS, Circuit Judges, and MORRIS, District Judge.
The plaintiff sued for infringement of Letters Patent No. 1,613,055, issued to him on January 4, 1927. Only the first claim was in suit. The single issue was validity of the patent, the defendant admitting that, if valid, he infringed. The learned trial court found the patent invalid for want of invention in view of the art and dismissed the bill. The case is here on the plaintiff's appeal.
The invention, as disclosed by the claim, is for a composition of matter "for stopping leaks in hot-water circulating systems, comprising a mixture of aluminum, flaxseed meal, sulphur and soap," in about the proportions, as disclosed by the specification, of
Powdered Aluminum, 15 per cent. Flaxseed Meal, 60 per cent. Sulphur, 5 per cent. Soap, 20 per cent.
In order to determine whether the claimed invention constitutes progress in a useful art for which the inventor is entitled to the reward of a patent, clause 8, § 8, art. 1, of the Constitution, we shall first inquire in what art the invention stands, and what arts, seemingly analogous or related, are outside its borders. This inquiry will be pursued along lines that distinguish not merely the physical differences in the arts but particularly the difference in their problems.
The inventor defines his art as that of stopping leaks not everywhere but "in hot-water circulating systems," of which the best illustration (though not a limitation) is the hot-water circulating system of an automobile combustion engine, including the radiator, to which, for convenience and because it is there that most leaks occur, we shall address our discussion. Admittedly this art is crowded.
But leaks also occur in the inner tube of an automobile tire and many preparations or compositions of matter have been invented to stop them. Whether an analogous or a different art, it, too, is crowded.
There has been a tendency, because of the fact of leaks and the common desire to stop them wherever they occur, to regard both arts as one. In consequence, the crowds of inventors in the two arts have become badly mingled and their inventive conceptions have become mixed and confused when applied to the problems and remedies of one art or the other.
The test whether the arts are the same or different lies not in the fact, or in the thought, of leaks, common to both arts, but in the difference in leaks, in the place of the leaks, in the problems arising from difference in place and structure and in the means and methods of solving them.
In an automobile tire with its inner tube, which for convenience we shall regard as a unit, there is no "hot-water circulating system." The tire is, therefore, on the patentee's definition, outside the art of the patent. But it has, nevertheless, a fluid circulating system, normally that of air. Availing themselves of this fact, inventors conceived that if some leak-stopping composition were injected into the tire, it would circulate with the air and any added fluid and, coming upon a puncture or leak when it occurred, would stop it. Thus, when such solid matter is injected and added to the air or other fluid, the tire has an artificial circulating system, though of course not a "hot-water circulating system", for there is no conceivable way of making water in a tire hot, except through friction, and of keeping it hot all the time. To make a composition that will stop leaks in tires, inventive minds, differing in detail, have run along two very definite lines. One is to get some material, vegetable or mineral, which on becoming moist will swell and on entering the leak will plug it. They have found and used several kinds of vegetable matter, such as rice, flour, gambier, rubber flakes, oatmeal, rye meal, and, more often, flaxseed meal. They have also used the minerals magnesium and asbestos. In early days, they used the animal product — chicken feathers.
Inventors realized, of course, that if the dry and solid vegetable, mineral or animal leak-stopping material were put in the tube without some medium other than air by which it could be carried with the revolutions of the wheel to the entire inner surface of the tube, the leak stopping materials would not reach the leaks and, therefore, would not stop them; so they resorted — this is the inventors' second uniform practice — to a carrier of a gelatinous, glutinous, sticky or ropey consistency, such as sugar, dextrin, glucose, molasses, glycerin and glue which, carrying the solids in heavy solution, will, by force of the compressed air, exude into a puncture and, hardening by oxidation, plug it and stop the leakage of air.
This, roughly, is the tire leak-stopping art.
The structure and leak problems of an automobile circulating system are altogether different from those of a tire. In the first place, there is a difference of temperature, the difference between a hot engine and a cold tire. In the next place, the system holds water instead of air. The water becoming heated as it circulates around the hot parts of the engine must later be cooled so that on its return to the engine it will keep it at a predetermined temperature. To cool the water, whose temperature, volume and circulation are all carefully calculated with reference to engine temperature, resort is had to the familiar radiator, with its myriads of apertures through which the cool outside air is drawn by fan power. The organization of the radiator is such as to effect the greatest possible radiation. To that end there is made and exposed the greatest possible radiation surface. This is accomplished by making numerous water passageways through narrowly separated sheets of metal extending from the front backwardly. Taking one passageway between two sheets as an example of all, the passageway is increased in surface exposure by indenting the metal sheets so that they have innumerable lumps and protuberances. The passageway between these two lumpy sheets of metal is not more than 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch in diameter so that the hot water in the process of being cooled by radiation flows from the top of the radiator downwardly through these passageways in thin sheets and (according to the testimony in another case before us) changes direction equal in degrees to 20,000 right angles in...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Corp. v. Tatnall Meas. Sys. Co.
...differences but particularly to the differences in their problems and the means and methods of solving them. Radiator Specialty Co. v. Buhot, 3 Cir., 1930, 39 F.2d 373, 374; Wallace v. Mandel Bros., Inc., 7 Cir., 1947, 164 F.2d 861, 864.13 So tested it is plain that the precision resistor a......
-
Anchor Plastics Co., Inc. v. Dynex Indus. Plastics Corp.
...distinguish not merely the physical differences in the arts but particularly the difference in their problems. Radiator Specialty Co. v. Buhot, 39 F.2d 373 (3d Cir. 1930). The art, I find, which is pertinent is the art of extruding a thermoplastic material about a metal foil. I do not accep......
-
Thomson Machinery Company v. Larose, Civ. A. No. 7222.
...the manner of its achievement or the quality of the mind which gave it birth, that the patent law concerns itself." Radiator Specialty Co. v. Buhot, 3 Cir., 39 F.2d 373, 376. The presumption of validity attends the grant of a patent, and the burden of persuasion of invalidity is on the puta......
-
Alfred Bell & Co. v. Catalda Fine Arts
...a translation. Compare cases holding that a patentable invention may stem from an accidental discovery. See, e. g., Radiator Specialty Co. v. Buhot, 3 Cir., 39 F.2d 373, 376; Nichols v. Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co., 4 Cir., 109 F.2d 162, 165; New Wrinkle v. Fritz, D.C.W.D.N.Y., 45 F.Supp. 10......