Shuldener v. Trio Water Engineering Corporation

• Decision Date: 20 February 1936
• Citation: 15 F. Supp. 732
• Parties: SHULDENER et al. v. TRIO WATER ENGINEERING CORPORATION et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

15 F. Supp. 732

SHULDENER et al. v. TRIO WATER ENGINEERING CORPORATION et al.

District Court, S. D. New York.

February 20, 1936.

Dean, Fairbank, Hirsch & Foster, of New York City (Morris Hirsch, of New York City, of counsel), for plaintiffs.

Cooper, Kerr & Dunham, of New York City (Thomas J. Byrne and Henry J. Savage, both of New York City, of counsel), for defendants.

COXE, District Judge.

This is a suit for infringement of the Shuldener patent, No. 1,796,407, issued March 17, 1931, covering apparatus for the treatment of liquid. The application as originally filed contained both method and apparatus claims, but the method claims were withdrawn during the Patent Office proceedings, leaving only the apparatus claims in the patent when it issued.

The plaintiff Shuldener is the owner of the patent, and the plaintiff Water Service Laboratories, Inc., holds an exclusive license for limited territory. The defendant Trio Water Engineering Corporation is engaged in making and installing the alleged infringing apparatus; and the complaint charges that the individual defendants, Steinmuller, Taylor, and Lindsay, organized the Trio Corporation for the purpose of infringement, and are now in control of its affairs. The defendant New York Dock Trade Facilities Corporation is a customer of the Trio Corporation, and is joined merely as a user.

The claims in issue are Nos. 1 to 11, inclusive, and the typical claim, No. 1, reads as follows: "1. In a liquid installation, the combination of a container partly charged with a treating fluid heavier than the liquid to be treated, means terminating adjacent the upper wall of the container admitting liquid from the source into the upper part of said container at one region thereof, and means terminating adjacent the upper wall of the container for delivering liquid from the upper part of said container at another region thereof whereby the liquid flow occurs without passing directly through undissolved treating fluid."

The defenses are invalidity and noninfringement.

The object of the patent is to provide a simple and dependable system, which can readily be built into, or applied to, the regular water system of an apartment house, hotel, or other structure, for the purpose of treating the water to prevent rust in the pipes. The treating material recommended is sodium silicate, which, when introduced into the water, has the effect not only of neutralizing the carbonic acid gas, but of coating the inner surface of the pipes with scale to keep rust from forming. The main problem was to inject this substance automatically into the water system in proper quantity, so as to secure uniformity of treatment.

The apparatus shown in the patent consists of a metal tank only partly filled, preferably about halfway, with sodium silicate; this tank is connected in a shunt passage to the regular water supply main; inlet and outlet pipes extend to the top of the tank; and between the pipes there is an invariant restriction orifice in the main to permit only a small proportion of the water to pass through the top of the tank. There is also disclosed a control valve in the outlet pipe to regulate the flow of water through the tank.

There were a number of unsuccessful attempts prior to Shuldener to solve the problem of pipe rust, and the record contains testimony regarding the history of the Drip Feed, Deactivator, and Deaerator systems, all of which, after prolonged periods of trial, were discarded as unsatisfactory. None of these prior systems resembled Shuldener's; but they are significant as showing the failure of contemporary workers in the same...