Safety Car Heating & Lighting Co. v. U.S. Light & Heating Co.

• Decision Date: 11 December 1914
• Docket Number: A-3.
• Citation: 222 F. 318
• Parties: SAFETY CAR HEATING & LIGHTING CO. v. UNITED STATES LIGHT & HEATING CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

222 F. 318

SAFETY CAR HEATING & LIGHTING CO. v. UNITED STATES LIGHT & HEATING CO.

No. A-3.

United States District Court, W.D. New York.

December 11, 1914

Duell Warfield & Duell, of New York City (C. H. Duell, F. P Warfield, H. S. Duell, R. S. Blair, and D. G. Haynes, all of New York City, of counsel), for complainant.

Jones Addington, Ames & Seibold, of Chicago, Ill., and Kenefick Cooke, Mitchell & Bass, of Buffalo, N.Y. (W. Clyde Jones, Robert Lewis Ames, and Edwin B. H. Tower, Jr., all of Chicago, Ill., of counsel), for defendant.

HAZEL District Judge.

Infringement is alleged of patent No. 881,743, for dynamo suspension, issued March 10, 1908, to William I. Thomson, assignor of complainant. The dynamo is used in connection with the electric lighting of railway cars, and the specification is descriptive of a pulley or pulleys mounted fast upon the car axle and connected by belts to a corresponding pulley or pulleys upon the armature shaft of a generator which supplies the current to the lamp circuits, as is more particularly explained in two other actions between the same parties for infringements of Creveling patent, No. 747,686, and Thomson patent, No. 926,518, in which cases opinions of this court are this day filed. 222 F. 310, 320.

The object of the patentee herein was to provide means for mounting the dynamo and securely adjusting the same in position. The claims in issue are the sixth, seventh, and eighth, of which the sixth claim, for dynamo adjustment parallel to the axle, is the broadest. It reads as follows:

'6. In apparatus of the class described, in combination, an axle, a dynamo, power transmitting means interposed between said dynamo and said axle, means adapted to permit adjustment of the position of said dynamo in a direction substantially parallel to said axle, and means adapted to hold said dynamo in any one of various positions in the direction of said adjustment.'

Claim 7 is for the suspension of the dynamo in a longitudinal direction, while claim 8 specifies that the dynamo is positioned beneath its point of suspension and that the adjustment is lateral and longitudinal.

The defenses are anticipation, limitation of claims, prior use, and noninfringement. There was evidence that prior to the patent in suit there had been in public use dynamo suspension for car lighting systems provided with means for longitudinal and lateral adjustment, and that there were also several prior patents embodying disclosures of dynamo suspension, axle driven, for car lighting systems, with means for adjustment parallel to the axle or for longitudinal or lateral adjustment. patents-- patent No. 746,610, granted to Waddell & Brooks December 8, 1903; and patent No. 768,392, granted to Moskowitz August 23, 1904-- to show the state of the art at the date of the invention in suit. These patents disclose means for dynamo suspension which, I think, embody the essential features of the patent in suit.

The Waddell & Brooks patent is for a dynamo suspended on a cross-bar or shaft, and is attached laterally to the beams of...