Shrader v. Reed

• Decision Date: 02 September 1952
• Docket Number: Civ. A. 12-51.
• Citation: 108 F. Supp. 35
• Parties: SHRADER et al. v. REED et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Nebraska

108 F. Supp. 35

SHRADER et al. v. REED et al.

Civ. A. 12-51.

United States District Court D. Nebraska, Omaha Division.

September 2, 1952.

David W. Swarr, of Omaha, Neb., and Thomas E. Scofield, of Kansas City, Mo., for the plaintiffs.

Theodore L. Richling, of Omaha, Neb., and Andrew F. Wintercorn, of Rockford, Ill., for the defendant.

DELEHANT, District Judge.

The plaintiffs, citizens of Nebraska, as the owners of letters patent numbered respectively 2,490,715, (referred to herein as Shrader Patent "A") and 2,534,685, (referred to herein as Shrader Patent "B") originally issued, the former on December 6, 1949 to Shrader, the latter on December 19, 1950 to both plaintiffs, and said to cover inventions respectively for a "corn harvesting mechanism", and for "Corn Snapping Rolls", brought this action against the defendant, a Nebraska retail implement dealer. In their complaint they set up the patents, their ownership, their infringement by the defendant through the sale of devices embodying their alleged inventions, and the giving of statutory notices both on products manufactured within the patents and of infringement, and prayed for injunctive relief, an accounting, for damages, and costs and attorneys fees.

Answering, the defendant admitted the issuance of the two patents and notice to him of their claimed infringement by him, but denied the validity of either of them for want of invention in the face of sundry cited earlier patents, several specified prior uses, publications and sales, and prior art, as also for failure to point out the claimed inventions, denied infringement, and prayed for dismissal and the recovery of his costs. The accused device was merely sold by the defendant and was manufactured by L. H. Schultz Manufacturing Company of Rochelle, Illinois, herein called the "Schultz Company".

Trial of the action has been had, save upon the issue of an accounting, which was reserved pending the determination of the underlying questions of the validity of the plaintiffs' patents and of the defendant's alleged infringement. Counsel have assisted the court in its work by the submission of comprehensive briefs. The record before the court tenders for present answer only the validity of the patents relied upon and, if that be affirmed, the alleged infringement. Such other questions as were made by the pleadings seem not to have been carried forward by the evidence.

Upon careful consideration of the entire record, including an inspection of physical exhibits and a study of the several patents of the plaintiffs, along with the prior patents resorted to by the defendant, the court is satisfied, and finds, that the plaintiffs' patents are invalid for want of invention in the light of the earlier patents advanced against them.

At what seems to be a more appropriate place, the court will later in this memorandum set out very briefly and summarily the course of work and experimentation by which Shrader arrived at the point of initiating his several patent proceedings. To the extent of their pertinence to the validity of the patents which he ultimately obtained, that material may also be considered at this point in the opinion.

The claims in Shrader Patent "A"¹ and Shrader Patent "B"² are respectively set out in separate footnotes. Diluted in respect of their "patentese" ingredient, and translated into reasonably conventional English, each of them describes a correlated pair of rolls for attachment and use upon a mechanical corn harvester.³ In actual employment such a harvester, usually treating two corn rows concurrently, moves at a fairly constant rate of speed, ordinarily under petroleum products power, along the entire course of the corn row subjected to its operation. By means of two appropriately spaced flaring panels of sheet metal material forming a narrow corridor with widened forward elements, whose lower margin is adjusted near to, but safely above, the ground, the corn stalks within each separate row are collected and pressed somewhat together and, along a progressively narrowing passage way, channeled, still standing and affixed to the soil, into an activated mechanism, of which the rolls are essential, though not the only parts. An important unit in that mechanism, not involved in the patents, is a pair of parallel endless chains arranged one at either side of the metal channel with attached metallic fingers projecting from the chains into the channel which, moving at equal speed in the direction opposite to that of the forward progress of the whole machine, through the instrumentality of those fingers engage the stalks and tend to press them gradually to the rear of the harvester and into and through its snapping and husking elements.

That snapping and husking machinery is mounted on two steel bars of equal length affixed substantially parallel to and a few inches from each other, with their forward ends placed several inches rearward from the front ends of the flaring sheet metal collecting section and also near to the ground, and their rear ends elevated to make the rearward slope of each of the two parallel bars about thirty degrees upward from the horizontal plane.

These two bars or rods are so made and disposed that they respectively pass through tubular rolls, sometimes partly of rubber material but otherwise and generally of metallic character. The tubular rolls may consist of a single complete roll for each carrying rod, or they may consist of an assembly of separate sections selected and arranged to conform to the owner's judgment of the most efficient devices for his individual fields of corn. In actual use of the harvester the rolls, under the impulse of power transmitted through gears, revolve at like speed in opposite directions, each inwardly and downwardly, and, with their several projecting devices, infra, tend to draw each corn stalk rearwardly and downwardly and to remove its ears and denude it of its husks. It is only for complementing rolls of this character usable on harvesters made by different manufacturers that the Shrader patents are conceived. Such rolls, of whatever detail in design, including the Shrader rolls, are claimed to accomplish their purposes by the broadly similar, though somewhat variant, traumatization of the corn stalk, the ear shank and, on ripe corn, eventually the husks as the stalk proceeds through the mechanism.

The rolls envisioned in Shrader Patent "A" are basically two heavy cast iron cylindrical tubes, whose outside circumferences exclusive of their protuberances are substantially smaller at their forward ends. They are about twenty-five inches in length. Proceeding from the forward or smaller end of each of them are two equally spaced ridges, each with rounded surface on its side in the direction of its operating rotation, which wind spirally upward around the tubes with progressively widening intervals between the ridges until they terminate about seven inches from the rear and upper end of the tube. Commencing at this distance from that end of the tube, four equally spaced cast ridges, also with rounded surfaces on their sides in the direction of operating rotation commence, which extend longitudinally along the tube for the remainder of its length. The upper terminus of each of the spiral ridges is spaced about midway between two of the longitudinal ridges. The directions of those spiral formations are reversed as between the two rolls in the pair and they and the longitudinal ridges are so devised that they mesh as they rotate in operation.

Shrader Patent "B" contemplates a roll similar to that within the thought of Patent "A" except that the longitudinal ridges do not proceed from their point of origin as above indicated all the way to the upper or rear end of the tube, but rather proceed to a point about two inches from the upper end of the roll, from which, changing from their shape with rounded forward surface into a lug or ridge in the shape of an isosceles triangle based on the roll, they turn spirally in a direction opposite to the course of the forward spirals and extend to the end of the roll. The roll with all of its ridges or lugs is cast from molten iron in a single operation from a pattern and is a heavy rugged object.

Notice is taken also of the evident distinction between claims 1 and 2 of the Shrader Patent "B" (see footnote 2 for exact copy thereof) which results from the introduction into claim 2 of the phrase "with the ends of the ridges terminating at points between the lugs", by which alone it is differentiated from claim 1. It will be observed that, in the course of the prosecution of the proceeding to obtain Patent "A", after a preliminary rejection of the application on the basis of the earlier Jochumsen patent No. 2,293,757, infra, language, evidently in the way of a limitation, to the substantial effect of the quoted phrase was inserted into each claim either expressly or by reference; whereupon Patent "A" was granted. It is left somewhat uncertain whether the omission of the same material from claim 1 of Patent "B" was designated to free Patent "B" either entirely or optionally from the restriction reflected in the quoted language and made in each claim of Patent "A". Upon the submission of the case counsel for the plaintiffs place emphasis upon the breach in continuity between the forward spiral ridges and longitudinal lugs in their support of the departure of both patents from the prior art, but remind the court of the unlimited language of claim 1 of Patent "B" when arguing in support of their claim of infringement by the accused device whose two spiral ridges merge into two of its four longitudinal lugs. Generally and practically, however, their emphasis throughout the case has been upon the feature of discontinuity at that point. And it is reflected also in their finished rolls as exhibits upon the trial.

In field employment, the rolls with their forward ridges first engage or grasp the corn...