Veneer Machinery Co. v. Grand Rapids Chair Co.

• Decision Date: 02 November 1915
• Docket Number: 2567.
• Parties: VENEER MACHINERY CO. v. GRAND RAPIDS CHAIR CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

227 F. 419

VENEER MACHINERY CO. v. GRAND RAPIDS CHAIR CO.

No. 2567.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

November 2, 1915

Chappell & Earl and Fred L. Chappell, all of Kalamazoo, Mich., for appellant.

Samuel W. Banning, of Chicago, Ill. (Thomas A. Banning, of Chicago Ill., of counsel), for appellee.

Argued before WARRINGTON and KNAPPEN, Circuit Judges, and McCALL District Judge.

WARRINGTON Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree dismissing the petition of the Veneer Machinery Company, which we shall call plaintiff.

The petition is of the ordinary form used in patent infringement cases; and the answer of the Grand Rapids Chair Company (herein called defendant) is of the usual form, denying validity and infringement. The petition is in terms based upon two patents, though the issue tried and the evidence offered concern only one of them. This patent was applied for by the inventor, W. M. Boenning, August 1, 1901, and was issued to him September 30, 1902, and numbered 709,864. Admittedly title to the patent is in the plaintiff, having been assigned to it by Boenning in March, 1907. The alleged infringing device is claimed to have been constructed according to a patent issued to John Black, December 5, 1911 numbered 1,010,846. It is stipulated that after plaintiff acquired title to the Boenning patent, and before commencement of the suit, defendant made use of a machine which is identified in the deposition of plaintiff's expert; but, while the expert speaks of the machine as one manufactured under the Black patent, he states that a number of changes had been made in the machine 'as built.' References to the patent were, however, regarded by him as useful in connection with certain drawings made and produced by him.

Both of these patents, as also the machines made and used under them, relate to and involve apparatus for edge-uniting veneers. Both patents describe and both types of machines embrace mechanical means for forcing trued edges of veneer strips hard together, and for preserving this relation by simultaneously applying adhesive tape to the upper surfaces of the strips, so as to cover and secure the union of their abutting edges.

The question is whether plaintiff's patent is infringed by the defendant's machine. We state the question in this way for the reason that, in spite of defendant's answer (if we lay aside claim 14 of the patent), both the evidence and the argument result alike in showing and admitting patentable invention in the Boenning machine, though the breadth of the invention and the consequent range of equivalents are in controversy and will be considered later. Both patents, as well as the machines in issue, involve many combined devices to attain a common result. Sixteen drawings are employed in Boenning's and six in Black's letters patent to illustrate the various parts of the machine which each describes in his specification; additional drawings and also models are produced to explain and display the machines that are in actual use; and yet the ultimate issues are reduced by the evidence to a comparatively small number of controverted parts. It is therefore not necessary to a right understanding of the case either to reproduce the drawings or to call attention to the uncontested details set out in the record.

1. Patent in Suit. The controverted portions of the machine covered by this patent may be said to comprise a table, about 4 feet in length, with two endless-chain conveyers commencing near its front end and centrally located, one immediately above and in line with the other, which are operated lengthwise of the table and thence through a drying box for an entire distance of something less than 30 feet. These chains engage and pass over sprocket wheels, one set of which is placed near the forward end of the table and the other set at the end of the drying box. The upper surface of the lower conveyer, in plane with the upper surface of the table, is so shaped and supported as to form a solid bed; the lower surface of the upper conveyer is yieldingly held in contact with the upper surface of the other; and the two form a combined conveyer and press for the contacting edges and adjacent surfaces of the strips of veneer passing through them. These relations of the conveyers are maintained by two lines of rollers, one disposed beneath the portion of the lower conveyer which moves in the plane of the table, and the other above the portion of the upper conveyer and so as to exert pressure upon it while its lower surface is in contact with the upper surface of the other conveyer. The axes of the lower line of these rollers are fixed; but the axes of the upper line have vertical movement in slots and are held down against the other conveyer by springs adjustable through mechanism operated by hand. Further, there are two sets of three rollers each, one set being on each side of the upper part of the lower conveyer and about midway of the length of the table. The upper surface of these rollers lies in the plane of the upper surface of the lower conveyer. The three rollers to the left of the conveyer have their axes at right angles to the plane of movement of the conveyer, while the three rollers on the opposite side are corrugated and have their axes inclined to this plane. Immediately over these two sets of rollers, two other like sets are similarly disposed; that is, having their axes parallel with those immediately below. The object of these rollers is to force the edges of the veneer blanks firmly together as they pass through the conveyers and the adhesive tape is applied. This degree of edge contact is brought about by the rigidity which is imparted to the veneers by the uniform pressure to which they are subjected when passing through the moving conveyers and rollers and by their consequent susceptibility to the influence of the lateral rollers; that is, by the tendency of the two sets located on the left side of the conveyers to hold each veneer strip passing between them in the plane of movement of the conveyers, while the tendency of the opposite sets is to crowd each veneer strip passing between them against the other veneer strip by reason of the oblique relation of such opposite rollers to the plane of movement of the conveyers.

The taping process is this: From a tape reel mounted above the forward portion of the upper conveyer the tape is carried directly downward and over a roller which contacts with another roller rotating in a glue reservoir. The tape thus having the glue distributed over its under surface is continued in the same course until it is engaged by the conveyers, with its upper surface contacting with the upper conveyer and its glue surface with the portions of the upper faces of the veneers adjacent to and also embracing their abutting edges during the passage of the veneers through the machine.

The lower conveyer and the lower sets of lateral rollers before described are power-driven and are operated at the same speed; but the upper conveyer, as also the upper lateral rollers, are operated as idlers through contact with the veneers passing between them and their corresponding parts below. The veneers are fed into the machine by an operator located in front of the table. To assist the operator the patent provides for an adjustable guide, though practically a thin blade is used in its stead. In using the former the trued edges of two veneers are brought into contact, while the outer edge of one of them is placed against the guide, and they are held together in that position and pushed forward by the operator until their ends are gripped by the conveyers. When the blade is used, it is fastened to the surface and lengthwise of the table opposite to the center line of the conveyers; and the trued edges of the veneers are held on opposite sides of the blade and pushed forward by the operator until they are gripped by the conveyers. When the veneers are manipulated in either of these ways, the method of edge-veneering is performed by the machine. ^[1]

Of the 22 claims of the Boenning patent, 6 are in suit-- 4, 5, 10, 12, 14, and 15. Claim 4 reads thus:

'In a device for edge-uniting two blanks of veneer or similar material, means for carrying said blanks in one direction, mechanism tending to force one of said blanks at an angle to the line of travel of said means and a distributer for placing a strip of adhesive material above the joint between said blanks. ' ^[2] 2. Alleged Infringing Device. It is stated by the expert for defendant, and as we have seen by the expert for plaintiff, that the machine used by defendant differs in some respects from the machine described in the Black patent. We need not, therefore, attempt to show more of the details of that patent than are involved in some of the differences between it and defendant's machine. This may be done when considering features of correspondence between the machine and the Boenning patent. In the defendant's machine two endless conveyer chains are mounted with their upper surfaces in the plane of a table. They incline toward each other and are separated by a wedge-shaped strip, having one of its triangular surfaces in the plane, with the head of the wedge at the front and the thin edge disposed vertically at the rear, of the table. These features correspond with the Black patent, except that it provides for conveyer belts instead of conveyer chains. Sprocket wheels are maintained underneath and near each end of the table, over which the conveyer chains run. The bottom portions of the chains hang down and run under a strut, not over an idler pulley such as the Black patent calls for, and the upper portions of the chains are supported upon plates (instead of rollers as the Black and Boenning

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