Spindelfabrik Suessen-Schurr v. Savio SpA
| Decision Date | 06 September 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. C-C-88-139-P,C-C-88-139-P |
| Citation | 778 F. Supp. 839 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of North Carolina |
| Parties | SPINDELFABRIK SUESSEN-SCHURR, STAHLECKER & GRILL GmbH, Hans Stahlecker, and Fritz Stahlecker, Plaintiffs, v. SAVIO S.p.A. and American Savio Corporation, Defendants. |
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Charles B. Park, III, Joell T. Turner, Bell Seltzer Park & Gibson, Charlotte, N.C., for plaintiffs.
Edgar Love III, Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman, Charlotte, N.C., George P. Hoare, Jr., Hedman Gibson Costigan & Hoare, P.C., New York City, for defendants.
1. This is a patent infringement action in which the Plaintiffs claim that the Defendants have infringed Claim 18 of U.S. Patent No. 4,059,946 hereinafter the Exhibit "PX" 273.
2. Subject matter jurisdiction, in personam jurisdiction, and propriety of venue are all admitted. The Court has subject matter jurisdiction of this action under 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a).
3. Defendants have filed two counterclaims. The first is for a declaratory judgment that Claim 18 is not infringed, invalid, and unenforceable. The second is based on the antitrust laws. Discovery and trial as to the antitrust claim have been severed and stayed.
4. The issues of infringement, validity, and unenforceability of Claim 18 were tried before this Court at Charlotte, North Carolina without a jury on October 29, 30, and 31, and November 1, 2, 5, and 6, 1990. Post-Trial briefs have been filed and a final hearing was held May 31, 1991. Plaintiffs were represented by Bell, Seltzer, Park and Gibson, Attorneys at Law. Defendants were represented by Kennedy, Covington, Lobdell & Hickman of the North Carolina Bar, and Hedman, Gibson, Costigan & Hoare, P.C. of the New York Bar.
5. The damage issue has been deferred by stipulation of the parties, approved by this Court.
6. The '946 Patent was issued on November 29, 1977 on application Serial No. 637,050 filed on December 2, 1975, and is part of the open-end rotor spin technology used in the textile industry.
7. The system is used for mending yarn breaks, a process commonly referred to as "piecing."
8. The Plaintiffs have asserted that two different systems of the Defendants' infringe Claim 18 of the '946 Patent. The Defendant's allegedly infringing systems will be referred to as the "old FRS system hereinafter "OFRS" and the "new FRS system" it also referred to as the "modified FRS" hereinafter "NFRS".
9. The individual Plaintiffs are two brothers, Hans Stahlecker and Fritz Stahlecker, citizens of Germany and joint owners of the Patent in suit.
10. The corporate Plaintiffs Spindelfabrik Suessen-Schurr, Stahlecker & Grill GmbH are hereinafter referred to as "Suessen." The transcript will be referred to as "Tr."
11. Suessen is a German corporation located in Suessen, Germany, and is the exclusive licensee of the Patent in suit. One of the principal products of Suessen is rotor spin boxes for open-end rotor spinning machines. Tr. 25; 146-148.
12. Hans Stahlecker is the chief executive officer of Suessen. Tr. 146.
13. Fritz Stahlecker is the chief executive officer of Wilhelm Stahlecker GmbH WST which is not a party to this litigation. WST conducts research, development, and engineering in the field of open-end spinning for Suessen under a contractual arrangement. Tr. 23-24.
14. Fritz Stahlecker and Hans Stahlecker own the entire right and interest to the '946 Patent and in WST. Tr. 146; 23; PX 274, Paper No. 8.
15. Suessen does not manufacture complete open-end rotor spinning machines, but manufactures components thereof. Suessen's main business in the open-end rotor spinning field is the production and sale of vital components for open-end rotor spinning machines. One such component is the spinbox. Tr. 146-147.
16. Defendant Savio S.p.A. hereinafter "Savio" is a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Italy, and has its principal place of business in Pordenone, Italy. Tr. 686.
17. Defendant American Savio Corporation hereinafter "American Savio" is a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of North Carolina, and has its principal place of business in Charlotte, North Carolina Docket Entry 54. Docket Entry will be referred to as "DE" hereinafter.
18. Savio is a manufacturer of textile machinery, including the accused systems of Defendants' FRS machines. Tr. 686. American Savio is the exclusive distributor of Savio's textile machines in the United States. Tr. 793. It is jointly owned by Savio and ENI, Savio's Italian parent, and is in the business of selling, erecting, and servicing Savio's machines in the United States.
19. Among these machines and in issue here are two versions of the Savio FRS automated open-end rotor spinning machine, which are manufactured by Savio in Italy, sold by Savio to American Savio, and exclusively distributed by American Savio in the United States. Tavazani Conf. Tr. 3-4.
20. Referring to Fig. 1, infra p. 845, in open-end spinning, a continuous strand of untwisted loosely assembled fibers (called sliver) is drawn into the system by means of a feed roller which, in turn, feeds the sliver to a comber or opening roll. The comber roll has teeth on the outside and rotates at a high rate of speed, 5,000 to 8,000 r.p.m., separating individual fibers of the sliver and directing these fibers through a feed tube or fiber transfer tube into a cup-shaped rotor with an interior annular groove. This process occurs within 5 milliseconds. The rotor is usually confined in an underpressure (vacuum) chamber, and rotates at very high speeds feeding individual fibers combed from the sliver through the feed tube by action of the vacuum in the spinning chamber. The fibers fed to the interior of the rotor are directed by centrifugal force into the rotor groove where they form a ring of fibers. During spinning, twist is continuously inserted into this ring of fibers. These fibers are then pulled out of the rotor groove in the form of twisted yarn, while at the same time, the spinning chamber containing the ring of fibers is continuously replenished with new fibers from the feed tube. Tr. 32-37; PX 500, pp. 8-9. In another version, the separated fibers are drawn through the feed tube from a vacuum generated by perforated holes in the rotor or by an independent vacuum source. Tr. 119-125; PX 327, 328.
21. In order to start this continuous spinning operation, a length of twisted yarn is inserted down into the yarn withdrawal tube and into contact with the fiber ring where it attaches itself to a point on the fiber ring and begins to insert twist into the fiber ring at that point. Upon attachment (piecing), the inserted twisted yarn end is then pulled out of the yarn withdrawal tube, bringing the newly formed twisted yarn with it, and spinning is restarted. This is called "start-spinning" and the area where the yarn end is joined with the fiber ring is known as the "piecing point" PX 500, p. 9; Tr. 37; 576-77.
22. From the rotor grooves, the fibers are twisted and drawn out of the rotor through an extraction tube as yarn. This yarn is then transferred by rollers to the yarn package.
23. If there is a yarn break the spinning process is interrupted and the twisted yarn separates from the ring of fibers in the groove of the rotor. The sliver feed stops, but the comber roll continues to rotate. Depending on the length of time feeding is stopped, the lead end of the sliver may be damaged and the fibers broken or shortened by the action of the comber roll. The lead end of the sliver is called the fiber "beard" or "tuft." PX 500, p. 10; Tr. 559-61.
24. In commercial open-end spinning operations, when a yarn breaks, a detector generates a signal which causes the supply roller to be stopped. In this manner, no additional sections of fiber are fed to the comber roll; however, fibers are still being transported into the rotor because the remaining fiber beard continues being combed out. These fibers end up in the spinning rotor. Before a piecing operation is performed, the spinning rotor is stopped for a brief period of time. Tr. 39-40. The opening or comber roll continues to turn. Tr. 41. There is necessarily a lapse of time between the moment of break and the moment at which a patrolling operator or an automatic traveling piecer learns of the break and begins to restart spinning by piecing up. This lapse of time necessarily varies depending upon the whereabouts of the operator or automatic traveling piecer at the moment of the break, how long it takes to recognize the existence of the break, and other factors. Because of this time variable, when piecing is ultimately initiated, the nature (i.e., the amount of fibers remaining on the comber roll versus the amount of fibers which have already been combed out by the continuously operating comber roll after the sliver feed was stopped) of the constantly aging fiber beard is unknown. If fibers from this unknown fiber beard are then deposited in the rotor groove so as to be used in forming the ring of fibers necessary for piecing up, the piecing point itself will thus include an unknown quantity of fibers, and the resulting piecing points will vary in size from piecing to piecing depending upon how long the fiber beard happened to be when combed out. PX 500, p. 10; Tr. 36, 46-47, 50; PX 273, Col. 2, L. 9-26.
25. Thus, commercial spinners needed a system for use on open-end spinning machines to eliminate an unknown, inconsistent quantity of fibers from the fiber beard being fed into the rotor where they formed the ring of fibers and are then incorporated into the piecing point. Tr. 46-47. An inconsistent quantity of fibers in the ring typically resulted in piecing points which were either too thin, and thus prone to break, requiring further piecing by the operator, or which were...
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...infringe Plaintiffs' patent, it does infringe under the doctrine of equivalents. See Spindelfabrik Suessen-Schurr, Stahlecker & Grill v. Savio S.p.A., 778 F.Supp. 839, 862 (W.D.N.C.1991) (holding that the doctrine of equivalents requires that the accused device perform "substantially the sa......