REPUBLIC ELECTRIC CO. v. General Electric Co.

• Decision Date: 16 July 1928
• Docket Number: No. 3701.,3701.
• Citation: 27 F.2d 595
• Parties: REPUBLIC ELECTRIC CO., Inc., et al. v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

27 F.2d 595 (1928)

REPUBLIC ELECTRIC CO., Inc., et al. v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.

No. 3701.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

July 16, 1928.

Charles J. Holland, of New York City, for appellants.

Howson & Howson, of New York City (Hubert Howson, of New York City, Albert G. Davis, of Schenectady, N. Y., and Frederick P. Fish, of Boston, Mass., of counsel), for appellee.

Before BUFFINGTON, WOOLLEY, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.

WOOLLEY, Circuit Judge.

By the complaint in this suit (the fourth in a group of suits for infringement of patents for incandescent lamps) the General Electric Company charges the defendants with infringing the Just and Hanaman patent No. 1,018,502 and the Langmuir patent No. 1,180,159 by making and selling incandescent lamps of the type known as No. 1129, which are headlights for automobiles, and of the type known as No. 82, which are tail lights for automobiles. From a decree for a preliminary injunction the defendants took this appeal.

The case on the facts is closely related to the Desmond Case (C. C. A.) 27 F.(2d) 590, the Atlas Specialty Case (C. C. A.) 27 F. (2d) 593, and the Sunray Lamp Case (C. C. A.) 27 F.(2d) 595, and has been considered and will be disposed of on the principles of law applicable to the allowance and review of preliminary injunctions in patent cases briefly stated and adequately supported by authorities cited in the opinion in the Desmond Case.

The Republic Company admits that it makes automobile lamps of the No. 1129 type, but denies that it makes lamps of the No. 82 type, and says that those of the No. 1129 type do not infringe the patents in suit. To sustain this contention it directs an attack mainly against the scope of the Langmuir patent which covers, roughly stated, a filament of tungsten centered in an atmosphere of inert gas, preferably dry nitrogen. It claims that the Langmuir patent, if valid (and in a proceeding of this kind where the patent has been frequently sustained we assume that it is valid) is for the inventive conception of a correlation between the filament material and the gaseous atmosphere whereby the atmosphere reduces the tendency of the material to vaporize and makes it possible to operate commercially at higher efficiency and for a longer time than can be realized with the same material in a vacuum; that such correlation is efficient only in a very large vacuum and that the alleged infringing automobile lamps of the defendants with small vacuums do not contain that correlation. The Republic Company says that in its headlights "everything is missing from the correlation except the gas and the coiled filament" and asserts that lamps of that sort are no more effective when operated in gas than when operated in a vacuum. Naturally we pause to wonder why the defendant used the Langmuir gas. However, that is a...