Boyden Power-Brake Co. v. Westinghouse Air-Brake Co.

70 F. 816, 17 C.C.A. 430, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2555
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedNovember 11, 1895
DocketNos. 131, 134
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 70 F. 816 (Boyden Power-Brake Co. v. Westinghouse Air-Brake Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Boyden Power-Brake Co. v. Westinghouse Air-Brake Co., 70 F. 816, 17 C.C.A. 430, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2555 (4th Cir. 1895).

Opinion

HUGHES, District Judge

(after stating the facts). The foregoing statement of facts and explanation of the devices upon which the decision of this case depends is of unusual length, which has been a necessary result of the extraordinary magnitude of the record and the unusual number and volume of the briefs of counsel in the case; but it has been prepared at the expense of very much labor, and is, we trust, sufficiently correct to warrant the conclusions of law which we have founded upon them.

Of the technical “claims” set out by Westinghouse in his application for the patent No. 360,070, those numbered 1, 2, and 4 are the special subjects of this suit. The device described in these claims is the one which Westinghouse charges in the bill of complaint in this case to have been infringed by the Boyden invention. The three “claims” are as follows, and the words in italics indicate the device charged to have been infringed:

“(1) In a brake mechanism, the combination of a main air pipe, an auxiliary reservoir, a brake cylinder, a triple valve and an auxiliary valve device, actuated, by the piston of the triple valve, and independent of the main valve thereof, for admitting air in the application of the brake directly from the main air pipe to the brake cylinder, substantially as set forth.
“(2) In a brake mechanism, the combination of a main air pipe, an auxiliary reservoir, a brake cylinder, and a triple valve having a piston whose preliminary traverse admits air from the auxiliary reservoir to the brake cylinder, and which, by a further traverse, admits air directly from the main air pipe to the brake cylinder, substantially as set forth. ”
“(4) The combination, in a triple-valve device, of a case or chest, a piston fixed upon a stem and working in a chamber therein, a valve moving with the piston stem, and governing ports and passages in the case leading to connections with an auxiliary reservoir and a brake cylinder and to the atmosphere, respectively, and an auxiliary valve actuated by the piston stem, and controlling com-municat 'on between passages leading to connections with a main air pipe and with the brake cylinder, respectively, substantially as set forth.

The phrase, “substantially as set forth,” is technical, and is equivalent to saying, “by the means described in the text of the inventor's application for letters patent, as illustrated by the drawings, diagrams, and models which accompany the application.” These words limit the general terms of the specification which set out the func-[827]*827fion performed by tbe invention, and confíne the inventor’s rights to Ms own special means of performing the function.

It is unnecessary to set out in totidem verbis the technical “claims” in which Boyden summarized his application to the patent office. Suffice it to say that his device, original and improved, which is represented in the patents issued to him as Nos. 481,134, 481,135, and 481,130, dated August 16, 1892, provided for the admission by a single valve, integral with the triple valve, of both train pipe air and auxiliary reservoir air to the brake cylinder, for emergency stops, lie accomplished this object, as Westinghouse did, by a device acted upon by the triple-valve piston when at the same extreme traverse at which it had been previously used for emergency work. As to using this extreme traverse, the patent for which had expired with No. 220,-556, he did what Westinghouse did; but the object of either being the discharge of train pipe air into the; brake cylinder (which was new) simultaneously with the discharge of auxiliary reservoir air.into that cylinder (which was old), Boyden invented a partitioning ring in the old triple valve to divide the chamber of the three valves from the chamber of the piston, and opened in this ring a port through which the train pipe air might pass from the piston chamber through the chamber of the valves to the brake cylinder; while Westinghouse attached an additional and individual machine to patent 220,556, consisting of a shun moved by the main piston in extreme traverse, an additional valve, and additional independent by-passages leading from the additional valve to the brake cylinder.' The same result was accomplished by the two devices, but these had but one means in common. Each used one common mechanical movement of the main piston, which was a movement for which the patent had expired. But the further mechanisms employed, respectively, by the two inventions were, respectively, as has been described.

The transmission of train pipe air and auxiliary reservoir air simultaneously to the brake cylinder is a result: or function, and is not patentable. The means by which this or any other result or function is accomplished may be many and various, and, if these several means are not mechanical equivalents, each of them is patentable. The question at bar is whether Boy den’s brass ring partition, with the port it contains, inserted in and made a part of the triple valve itself, successfully accomplishing the function of discharging train pipe air into the brake cylinder simultaneously with the triple valve’s discharge of auxiliary reservoir air into that cylinder, is the mechanical equivalent of Westingliouse’s attached machine, nonintegral, segregate», and individual, consisting of another stem, another valve, and by-passages peculiar to itself leading from the additional valve to the brake cylinder; both devices being put: in action by the triple-valve piston when on its old extreme ■ traverse. This question was presented, necessarily, to the patent office of the United Hiatus when Hoyden applied for a patent for the device under consideration. That officii employs the best experts in mechanics which it can secure in this and other countries. Its examinations are, indeed, ex parte in form, hut: they are, nevertheless, conducted under hot and [828]*828skilled contestation m every case of importance; and its decisions, though not conclusive, are entitled to great respect. That office, after full examination, awarded a patent to Boyden on the ICth day of August, 1892, for his quick-action improvement on the expired patent 220,550, and thereby ruled that the Boyden device did not infringe Westinghouse’s quick-action patent No. 360,070. That ruling takes rank here as the testimony of experts of the highest experience, skill, and knowledge in mechanics. That ruling was subsequent to the issuing to Westinghouse of both the patents Nos. 300,070 and 376,S87, four years after the latter patent, when the patent office had full knowledge of them.

The circuit court held, in its decision of this case, that the Boyden device was the functional equivalent of that of Westinghouse, as described in claim 2 of patent 300,070; that both devices depended upon the extreme traverse of the triple-valve piston of patent 220,550, and that tins traverse was new and unusual. It held, virtually, that the novelty of this extreme traverse, on which both the quick-action devices of the two inventions depended, and their functional equivalency, made Boyden’s device an infringement of Westinghouse’s. That the mechanism of Boyden differed from that of Westinghouse, so far as the mechanical means which were used in availing of the extreme traverse was concerned, does not seem to have been controverted by the circuit court.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
70 F. 816, 17 C.C.A. 430, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 2555, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/boyden-power-brake-co-v-westinghouse-air-brake-co-ca4-1895.