Brian Jackson Associates, Inc. v. Kennecott Copper Corp.

260 F. Supp. 679, 1962 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5528
CourtDistrict Court, D. Arizona
DecidedApril 27, 1962
DocketCiv. No. 119
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 260 F. Supp. 679 (Brian Jackson Associates, Inc. v. Kennecott Copper Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brian Jackson Associates, Inc. v. Kennecott Copper Corp., 260 F. Supp. 679, 1962 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5528 (D. Ariz. 1962).

Opinion

JAMES A. WALSH, Chief Judge.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

This action having been tried by the court without a jury, the court hereby finds the facts and states its conclusions of law as follows:

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. The plaintiff, Brian Jackson Associates, Inc., is an Arizona corporation and the owner, by assignment, of all right, title and interest in and to Redmond Patent No. 2,895,821.

2. At the time of the trial the inventor and patentee, Eugene R. Redmond, was the owner of a subtantial stock interest in the plaintiff corporation, such interest having been received by him in payment of his assignment of his patent rights.

3. Defendant, Kennecott Copper Corporation, is a New York corporation licensed to do business in the State of Arizona, and operates a copper smeltér at Hayden, Arizona, through its Ray Mines Division.

4. Plaintiff does not engage in the smelting of copper, has no other industrial activity, and was organized and exists solely as a patent holding and licensing activity, with particular reference to the patent in suit.

5. The complaint, as filed, joined as a party defendant San Manuel Copper Corporation, a Delaware corporation licensed to do business in Arizona. The case came on for hearing, however, pursuant to a second amended complaint and answer thereto, in which second amended complaint only Kennecott Copper Corporation is defendant.

6. The second amended complaint charges infringement within Arizona of the claims of Redmond Patent No. 2,895,-821 owned by plaintiff. Defendant has denied infringement, and asserted that the Redmond patent is invalid.

7. Plaintiff by letter notified defendant of the existence of its said Patent No. 2,895,821, charged defendant with infringement, and offered to license defendant to employ the process of the patent on a royalty basis. Defendant did not acknowledge said notice.

8. Copper smelting is such an old art that its origin goes back to antiquity. While apparatus, sources of copper, and specific techniques have varied extensively, the art of smelting has always included melting the ore or concentrate; bring-it into contact with air to produce a relatively impure copper mass which can be [680]*680separated from the stone-like material with which it is usually mixed; further contacting the copper mass with air to oxidize the mass and then removing impurities as slag or an escaping gas; poling the copper to remove at least part of the oxygen introduced by the air used as a reagent to oxidize impurities; and then casting the copper into bars, ingots or anodes. Poling traditionally has been accomplished with fresh cut wood poles, as the name implies, but in recent years specially constituted gases have been used for “poling” to remove oxygen.

9. Equipment of various kinds and of various sizes has been used in copper smelting, depending in part on the source of copper used, in part on the specific processing employed, and in part, also, on the size of the charge. In general, this equipment has been heated either by an external heat source, or by the exothermic reaction resulting from the oxidation of the material itself. One type of furnace used is the reverberatory type in which the charge lies in a shallow hearth, and is heated by the flame passing over its surface and by radiation from a low roof or arch. Modern rever-beratory furnaces are long and may accommodate a very large charge. For fifty years or more it has been the custom to produce in the reverberatory furnace a matte consisting principally of a mixture of copper and iron sulfide, charge this matte into a Bessemer-type converter, blow air through it to produce a partly refined copper, and then to purify the partly refined copper in some kind of refining furnace.

10. Sources of copper have varied over the years, the first copper used being undoubtedly native copper. Early smelting procedures employed ores relatively rich in copper, low in impurities, and so constituted chemically as to be easy to smelt. ' New methods of various kinds, including particularly flotation, permitted production of concentrates of very low grade ores, and a major part of copper smelting, including the operations of the defendant, now involves the use of flotation concentrates. By means of flotation, the first important purification step is practiced through the concentration of the copper-bearing portion of the ore. The patent in suit is not concerned with the source of the copper, nor with the manner in which the copper matte is produced.

11. Converters have been modified in several respects through the last fifty or more years from the standpoint of size, the lining used, and the physical make-up of the converter, including the manner of introducing air. Bessemer converters were first employed in the steel industry to remove carbon by oxidation, but adapting the principle to copper smelting to remove iron and sulfur presented some difficulties, and the openings (called tuyeres) for admitting air were removed from the bottom to the side of the converter before full success was achieved. Converters were first upright or vase-shaped, but the later adopted barrel type is now used almost exclusively. The first converters were very small, but the size was gradually increased until modern converters of the barrel type will hold a hundred tons or more of metal. The converters at the Copper Queen smelter, Douglas, Arizona, in 1928 held a maximum twenty tons of metal. Converters have been lined with either acidic or basic type refractory materials, the former entering into chemical reaction with the molten mass in the converter, and the latter being for all practical purposes inert.

12. The operation of the converter has, in general, been considered as falling into two stages. In the first or so-called slag-forming stage, the iron portion of the iron-copper-sulfide matte is oxidized to iron oxide, the sulfur escaping as sulfur dioxide (S02), and the iron oxide reacts with silica to form an iron silicate slag which is poured off to remove iron and leave a product consisting mostly of copper sulfide, known in the art as “white metal”. When silica-lined converters were used, the silica in the lining was consumed in forming the iron silicate slag. When a basic-lined converter is used, silica is added in sufficient quan[681]*681tity to form the iron silicate. Such silica is added through the mouth of the converter by a traveling crane using a boat, or by a Garr gun which blows a stream of silica into one end of the converter. About 1950, addition of silica by a conveyor system in which the silica was dropped into the converter while it was in the stack (upright) was adopted by the defendant in its Hurley, New Mexico, plant, but this practice was unknown before that time. The slag formed and removed during the first period or slagging stage, while comprising essentially iron silicate, may contain other impurities and some copper. This slag is normally charged back into the reverbera-tory furnace where the matte is produced.

13. During the second stage operation in the converter, the molten white metal, consisting principally of copper sulfide, is further blown to form metallic copper and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which escapes as a gas. As metallic copper is produced, it forms a separate layer below the white metal. Precious metals will selectively pass from the white metal to the copper by a process known as partition and, according to some practices, this copper is drawn off and further treated — this practice being known as selective converting.

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Related

San Manuel Copper Corporation v. Redmond
445 P.2d 162 (Court of Appeals of Arizona, 1968)

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Bluebook (online)
260 F. Supp. 679, 1962 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5528, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brian-jackson-associates-inc-v-kennecott-copper-corp-azd-1962.