York Ice Machinery Corporation v. L. & K. ICE CORP.
| Decision Date | 02 April 1934 |
| Citation | 6 F. Supp. 544 |
| Parties | YORK ICE MACHINERY CORPORATION v. L. & K. ICE CORPORATION. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Clarence D. Kerr, of New York City, Parker Dodge, of Washington, D. C., and Charles Neave, of New York City, for plaintiff.
Ernest W. Bradford, of Washington, D. C., and Ambrose L. O'Shea, of New York City, for defendant.
This is a suit for infringement of two Shipley patents, Nos. 1,718,310 and 1,718,313, for a method and apparatus for cooling liquids, and for an evaporator, both issued June 25, 1929. The defendant is the owner and operator of an ice making plant at Newark, N. J., alleged to infringe both patents. This plant was designed and installed by the Frick Company, of Waynesboro, Pa., and that company is conducting the defense of the present suit.
The claims relied on in Patent No. 1,718,310 are Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, and 15; and in Patent No. 1,718,313 Nos. 1, 2, and 3.
The defenses are invalidity and noninfringement.
The two patents relate essentially to ice manufacture on a large scale for commercial use; and the method normally employed for that purpose is to place the water to be frozen in tapered cans, and then circulate about the exterior faces of the cans brine which has been cooled by contact with evaporators containing a liquid refrigerant, such as ammonia.
Prior to Shipley, the two freezing systems most generally in use in can ice freezing were the continuous coil system and the shell and tube brine system. The former utilized a large number of continuous coils of pipe, between 200 and 1,200 feet in length, usually immersed in the brine tank between the cans; and in the latter the ammonia was introduced into a large boiler or shell containing horizontal pipes, through which the brine flowed. With the continuous coil system, it was impossible to keep the long coils flooded at all times with liquid refrigerant, particularly if the brine was circulated rapidly; and this necessarily kept the heat transfer rate low. Moreover, the system lent itself to pipe breakage, and was inconvenient for group handling of the cans. The shell and tube brine system also had serious limitations, inasmuch as the agitation of the ammonia within the shell was caused entirely by evaporation, and there was little opportunity for the liquid to circulate and recirculate so as to develop a maximum heat transfer rate. Furthermore, there was always a tendency of the brine to freeze in the pipes, causing them to burst.
Shipley's efforts were directed towards improving the continuous coil system; and in the first patent, No. 1,718,310, he shows the evaporator coils confined in a closed duct or brine raceway, separate from and parallel to the brine tank, through which the brine is circulated at a rapid rate between and around the coils. The evaporator coils in the preferred form of Fig. 2, consist of a large number of short, vertically disposed risers, connected at top and bottom to a pair of large horizontal parallel pipes called headers. The liquid refrigerant is fed through the bottom headers, which are large enough to keep the short risers constantly replenished with liquid refrigerant; and the gas forming in the risers finds a quick and ready passage to the top headers, carrying with it entrained liquid, and in that way stimulating the heat transfer rate by keeping the interior surfaces of the risers continually in a wet condition. The gas thus generated, and the liquid carried along with it, passes through the top headers to an accumulator or suction trap, in which the liquid and gas are separated. The liquid is returned directly to the lower headers, and the gas flows back to the compressor, where it is compressed and condensed into liquid, and then brought back to the bottom headers.
The second patent, No. 1,718,313, is for an improved form of evaporator for use with the Shipley apparatus of the first patent; and in place of the short vertical risers shown in Fig. 2 of Patent No. 1,718,310, V-shaped tubes have been substituted. The function of these V-shaped tubes is identical with that of the risers of the first patent; but it is asserted that the V-shaped tubes have manufacturing advantages not present in the vertical risers in that they may be more easily assembled and welded.
The Shipley system has met with considerable commercial success. The first installations were made in 1925, and in that year the plaintiff's continuous coil sales absorbed 88.8 per cent. of its business, and its vertical trunk sales 7.9 per cent. By 1929, the vertical trunk percentage had risen to 94.4 per cent., and in 1930 to 99.7 per cent. During this same period, the continuous coil sales fell off correspondingly, so that in 1930 the continuous coil portion of the plaintiff's business was practically nonexistent. Undoubtedly, the plaintiff in its sales efforts featured the Shipley system; but that does not fully account for the complete domination of the vertical trunk installations in the plaintiff's business by the end of 1930. Neither does the fact that some plants still prefer the shell and tube brine coolers detract from the merit of Shipley's invention, for Shipley was the first to employ in large scale ice production very high brine velocities; and the efficiency of the shell and tube systems has, no doubt, been considerably improved since the advent of Shipley by increasing the brine velocity through those coolers.
The typical claims of the first patent, No. 1,718,310, are Nos. 2, 4, 8, 11, and 15. Claim 2 is for "the combination of a brine tank; a flow enclosing duct communicating at its ends with opposite ends of said tank; an evaporator cooler in said duct including headers and risers, said cooler extending substantially the full height and width of the duct, and throughout substantially the entire length thereof; and means for drawing brine from said tank and forcing it under pressure head through said duct and back into said tank."
Claim 4 is substantially the same as claim 2, except that each riser is stated to have a point of connection with one header "below the point of connection of such riser with the other header." Claim 8 is also similar to claim 2, except that it specifies that the tubes connecting the header shall have a "rising gradient at all points from the inlet to the discharge header." Claim 11 adds...
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