Scott v. WOOD NEWSPAPER MACHINERY CORPORATION

Decision Date04 February 1938
PartiesSCOTT v. WOOD NEWSPAPER MACHINERY CORPORATION.
CourtNew Jersey District Court

Walter L. Hetfield, Jr., of Plainfield, N. J. (John C. Kerr, of Englewood, N. J., and Allan C. Bakewell, of New York City, of counsel), for plaintiff.

Pennie, Davis, Marvin & Edmonds, of New York City (William H. Davis and Morris D. Jackson, both of New York City, of counsel), for defendant.

CLARK, District Judge.

In the minds of those who practice its mysteries, the United States patent system is credited with the major part of our mechanical civilization. Without examining this thesis, one might observe that there are those who have been unkind enough to suggest that credit is in all respects not quite the appropriate word. However that may be, we can agree that the art of the patent in suit presents the one phase of that mechanical civilization with which we cannot quarrel. That art is the art of the distribution of information and more particularly the distribution of information by means of newspapers.

We imagine that nearly every one at one time or another has visited a newspaper plant. Our own first visit to the Newark Evening News took place at the age of ten. Our second, the other day and in connection with the litigation "started" by this opinion. We experienced again the feeling of awe at the instantaneous transformation of events into narratives at 3 cents per.

As the etymology indicates (venire) that transformation is either instantaneous or it is futile. By the same token, speed of production becomes not only a factor in meeting a demand for the product but a factor in the value of the product itself. As newspapers are produced by running webs of newsprint through printing presses, the speed at which those presses can be run governs the speed of production. Conditions of transportation govern the form in which newsprint can be fed to the presses. The individual rolls required by those conditions are quickly exhausted by the rapidly running press. The method of replacing an exhausted (expiring) roll by a fresh (replenishing) roll becomes then the key to the speed of the press and any improvement in that method correspondingly important.

Originally, because the roll holding rack was stationary, the presses had to be stopped entirely while the new roll was put in and pasted to the old one. Then came the first and great improvement embodied in the patent to Stone and Kohler, his assignee, Patent No. 1,124,673. Cline Electric Mfg. Co. et al. v. Kohler, 7 Cir., 27 F.2d 638. There had been patents and machines constructed thereunder which showed rolls mounted on rotatable reels (racks) and fed into printing presses by means of the rotation of the reels. Stone combined these reels with a belt which exerted pressure on the glue covered replenishing roll and thus made a paste. The Patent Office gave the Stone patent fifteen years consideration before issuing it. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit approved it after eleven months study on a theory of an inventive combination of reel and belt. The reel of this inventor held both rolls and was not stationary but rotating. Its rotation brought the replenishing roll into contact (feeding position) with the running roll and enabled the paste to be made automatically while the press was still running.

The Stone machine came to be known as the "Flying Paster." The adjective was, however, more flattering than accurate. The inherent tendency of newsprint to tear placed strain limitations on the speed at which the "thread" (paste) could be accomplished. The drag of the immobile (inert) roll would tear a web running at anything like press speed. The problem, therefore, became one of overcoming that immobility (or inertia) of the replenishing roll. Its solution led to the second improvement and the patent in suit.

The operators of the "Flying Pasters" had been in the habit of "boosting" or rotating the replenishing roll by hand. As in many other arts, the step from manual to mechanical was quickly taken and is embodied in the machine of the Stilwell patent No. 912,330. There the immobility (inertia) of the replenishing roll was overcome by its rotation at press speed. The practical trouble with that machine lies in the means used to bring about that rotation, namely, a surface belt. The experts for both sides agree that it failed because the belt wrinkled the paper, loosened its lint, and narrowed its possible pasting area.

The defendant attacks the validity of the Scott patent by offering two types of anticipation, first, a particular paper patent to Pfister in this particular art, and second, several operatable patents from the allegedly analogous art of winding paper generally. As the question of infringement admits, in our view, of no doubt, we are not going to express an opinion on what to us is the more difficult matter of validity. In case another court should find our certainty their uncertainty and vice versa, it may not be out of order to write a few words on each phase of the defendant's attack on the patent.

We were not impressed by the paper patent to Pfister, patent No. 1,250,217. The court has enlivened many a dull moment in its chambers (if there can be any such) by the operation of the working model of the Pfister roll changer furnished to it by defendant's counsel and correctly described by his opponent as seductive. We are satisfied that the latter's criticism of this model is justified and a fortiori that Pfister the patent, as distinguished from Pfister the model, does not anticipate Scott. Pfister does show a core drive and to that extent is an advance over Stilwell and by the same token a reason for limiting the scope of Scott. The...

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