RK Le Blond Mach. Tool Co. v. Wickes Bros.
| Decision Date | 15 December 1937 |
| Docket Number | No. 590.,590. |
| Citation | 23 F. Supp. 371 |
| Parties | R. K. LE BLOND MACH. TOOL CO. v. WICKES BROS. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan |
Allen & Allen, of Cincinnati, Ohio (Marston Allen and Gibson Yungblut, both of Cincinnati, Ohio, of counsel), for plaintiff.
Bodman, Longley, Bogle, Middleton & Farley, of Detroit, Mich. (I. Joseph Farley and Maurice W. Green, both of Detroit, Mich., of counsel), for defendant.
This is a suit for patent infringement brought by the R. K. Le Blond Machine Tool Company as plaintiff against Wickes Brothers as defendant, alleging infringement of certain patents. The suit deals with a more or less special type of lathe for machining the crankshafts of an automobile engine, and specifically turning what are known as the line bearings of such a crankshaft.
The suit is based upon three patents, one a reissue patent, No. 20,090, reissued September 1, 1936, upon an application filed July 2, 1936. This patent will for simplicity be referred to as the first patent. The original patent, of which this first patent is a reissue, was patent No. 1,843,359, granted February 2, 1932, upon an application filed December 15, 1928.
The second patent involved in the suit is reissue patent No. 19,905, which was reissued March 31, 1936, upon an application for reissue filed October 17, 1934. The original patent, upon which this reissue is based, was patent No. 1,934,976, granted November 14, 1933, upon an application filed July 2, 1930.
The third patent in suit is original patent No. 2,030,020, granted February 4, 1936, upon an application filed January 21, 1935.
The first patent was granted upon an application filed by William F. Groene as sole inventor, the second patent was granted upon an application filed by the said William F. Groene and George W. Luning as joint inventors, while the third patent was filed by the said William F. Groene and Walter R. Meyer as joint inventors.
All three of the patents were assigned to the Le Blond Company, the plaintiff here, prior to the filing of the original applications. The Le Blond Company, through its attorneys, conducted the proceedings in the Patent Office from the date of the original filing of each of the applications and also the proceedings connected with the reissue of the first and second patents; the originals of these patents, as well as the reissues, were therefore issued to the Le Blond Company as assignee of the respective inventors.
Patent No. 1,843,359, the original of the first patent, contained 20 claims as issued, while the reissue No. 20,090 contained the same 20 claims as the original patent, and in addition thereto, 5 new claims numbered 21 to 25 inclusive. Two of the original claims, 18 and 19 of this patent, and the 5 reissue claims, namely, claims 21 to 25, inclusive, were, at the outset of the case, charged by the plaintiff to be infringed by the defendant's construction. After all the proofs were in, original claim 13 of this patent was added to the case.
The second patent, reissue No. 19,905, contains 49 claims, of which claims 1 to 27, inclusive, were in the original patent No. 1,934,976, granted November 14, 1933, and the remaining claims 28 to 49 are claims added by the reissue. At the outset of the case original claim 19 and reissue claims 31 and 32 were relied upon. The 27 original claims of this patent were drawn in terms of machines, while the 2 reissue claims, 31 and 32, relied upon, were drawn in terms of a method.
Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 19, and 25 to 28 of the third patent No. 2,030,020 were stated at the outset of the case to be the claims that would be relied upon.
Both the first and second patents, together with their respective originals, disclose a complete lathe with chucks and tools for turning the line bearings of an automobile crankshaft, while the third patent discloses merely a plurality of different modifications in the construction of a chuck adapted to be used in a crankshaft lathe of the character involved.
The machines disclosed in the first and second patents are the type known in the machine tool art as center drive lathes to distinguish these lathes from the ordinary lathe. In the ordinary lathe the work is driven from what is known as the head stock which carries a main driving shaft of the lathe to which power is applied from any suitable source to rotate such shaft. According to the characteristics of the work it is either supported between a pair of centers, one carried by a head stock and the other by what is known as the tail stock, or clamped in a chuck carried by the head stock. When the work is supported between centers a face plate is ordinarily secured upon the main driving shaft of the head stock and rotation of the face plate is communicated to the work, usually by means of what is known as a dog secured to, and supported upon, the work and suitably engaged with the face plate, although in some instances various types of chucks are used to perform the function of the driving dog.
In the center drive type of lathe the main driving force to rotate the work for turning is imparted to the work by means of a chuck which instead of being secured upon the main driving shaft of the head stock is supported upon the bed of the lathe at some convenient point between the head stock and tail stock, which chuck is provided with suitable means to engage and grip the work securely after the latter has been placed between the lathe centers, rotation of the chuck being effected by means of suitable driving connection leading to the main driving shaft of the head stock. Center drive lathes of this particular type had been used for very many years prior to the applications of the patent in suit. Plaintiff has contended that the principal contribution made by its inventors to the art, as disclosed by the patents in suit, is in the provision of small milled surfaces in the web, or webs, of the crankshaft, which surfaces may be either in the form of re-entrant or female right-angled notches, as shown in the second patent, to engage correspondingly shaped projections provided in the chuck, or in the form of projecting lugs on the webs to engage a notch and shoulder in the chuck as in the first patent. In both of these patents the chucks are proportioned relatively to the work in such a manner that no part of the chuck will project over an adjacent line bearing of the crankshaft, thus offering no obstruction to the passage of the turning tools as said tools are fed transversely into the work and so that all of the line bearings of the crankshaft to be turned, as well as the two ends of the shaft which are known as the stub and flange ends will be exposed to the action of the turning tools. A plurality of turning tools in the machine shown in the patents are mounted on tool slides arranged to be fed laterally towards the axis of rotation of the work from both the back and front of the lathe, the tool slides carrying suitable tools for turning the cheeks or side faces of the webs of the shaft in addition to the tools for turning the bearings. The principal difference between the first patent and the second patent is in the substitution of hydraulic means to operate the tool slides in the machine of the second patent for the purely mechanical gearing used for this purpose in the machine of the first patent, together with some slight difference in the details of the construction of the center driving chucks.
In all three of the patents in suit the small milled locating surfaces formed in the web of the crankshaft have the same general location and characteristics and are such that a pair of the milled surfaces are provided, one on each side of the web and substantially in line with the axis of the pin bearing or throw of the crankshaft adjacent to such web or webs. Naturally the surfaces provided in the chuck for engagement with the milled surfaces in the crankshaft web are so positioned relative to the axis of rotation of the chuck that when the crankshaft is placed in the chuck with its milled surfaces in engagement with the co-operating surfaces provided in the chuck for engagement with the crankshaft and the crank lathe is driven to rotate the crankshaft, the rough forged crankshaft to be turned in the lathe will be properly positioned to insure the cleaning up of all of the line bearings and the flange and stub ends of the shaft. When the machines shown in the patents are stopped for loading and unloading, the locating surfaces on the chucks are naturally stopped at a point below the axis of rotation so that the shaft can be dropped into position with its milled surfaces resting on the corresponding surfaces provided in the chuck. The chucks of the first and second patents are of the type wherein one of the locating surfaces of the chuck is swung to an inoperative position for facilitating the loading and unloading operation and clamping means are provided to engage the crankshaft at a point substantially midway between the milled surfaces thereof but on the opposite side of the axis of rotation of the shaft and so that when the shaft is placed in the chuck the clamping means forces the milled surfaces of the shaft downwardly into tight engagement with the locating surfaces of the chuck; the movable jaw which provides one of the locating surfaces of the chuck being cooperatively associated with the clamping means so that the movable jaw is brought into engagement with one side face of one of a pair of locating surfaces on the crankshaft to crowd the shaft laterally into tight engagement with the pair of surfaces on the other side. In all three of the patents the pair of small milled notches or lugs form what may be considered as four locating surfaces, each notch or lug consisting of two surfaces at right angles to each other and there are four corresponding surfaces in the chuck. In the first two patents, one of the four surfaces in the chuck is on the movable jaw while the...
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