Cold Metal Products Co. v. Newport Steel Corp.

E.D. Kentucky

Cold Metal Products Co. v. Newport Steel Corp.

119 F. Supp. 880, 101 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 432, 1954 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4475

CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Kentucky

DecidedMarch 8, 1954

DocketNo. 516

StatusPublished

Cited by3 cases

This text of 119 F. Supp. 880 (Cold Metal Products Co. v. Newport Steel Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

Cold Metal Products Co. v. Newport Steel Corp., 119 F. Supp. 880, 101 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 432, 1954 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4475 (E.D. Ky. 1954).

Pincite

Opinion

SWINFORD, District Judge.

This is an action brought by the plaintiff, The Cold Metal Products Company, an Ohio corporation, against the Newport Steel Corporation, a Delaware corporation, having a mill and an established place of business in Campbell County, Kentucky, in this district, where the infringing acts complained of are alleged to have been committed.

The plaintiff became the owner by assignment of all three of the patents in suit in 1942 and title to the patents has. been held by the plaintiff throughout the entire period of the alleged infringement. The patents in suit are:

Keeney and Ferm 1,918.968 dated July 18, 1933

steckei 1,977.214 dated October 16, 1934

Montgomery 2,087,065 dated July 13, 1937.

The plaintiff asks for both preliminary and final injunctions against alleged further infringement of Letters Patent Nos. 1,977,214 and 2,087,065, and for an accounting of profits and damages arising out of the defendant’s alleged infringement upon each of the Letters Patent Nos. 1,977,214, 1,918,968 and 2,-087,065.

The defendant by its answer pleads a number of defenses but relies primarily upon the usual defenses in actions of [881]*881this character; that is, noninfringement and the invalidity of the patents.

The rolling mill of the defendant is a 2-stand reversing mill for the hot rolling of steel strip or sheets, comprising a roughing mill, a finishing stand, roll tables for supporting the material, coilers and coiler furnace on opposite sides of the finishing stand for coiling the material as it is passed back and forth between the reducing rolls of the finishing stand, and a final coiler for receiving the completed material. The mill was installed in the early part of 1949 and has been in operation since that time. The mill in its regular operation rolls large tonnages, in excess of twenty thousand tons of steel per month.

The instant case is concerned only with the specialized branch of general steel rolling art in which relatively thin sheets or strip-like material is hot rolled. These strips can be reduced to various degrees of thickness. Hot rolled sheets and strip are ordinarily from of an inch to .050" in thickness and may vary in width up to 80" or more. They also vary in length, depending, of course, upon the thickness and width desired, but may run from a few feet to several hundred feet long. The mill in question only rolls flat steel in strip form. The rolling of this hot strip is a specialized art which is divided from the rest of the rolling art. Its products are used for automobile body frames, metal rims for automobiles, guard rails, heavy stampings, tubings, automobile oil pans, steel decking, and as the starting material for the manufacture of cold rolled tin plate.

The history of the development of sheet-like steel is interesting and important. This background is not necessary, however, to the determination of the issues. It should be pointed out that modern industry and manufacturing produced a demand for hot roll strip or sheet-like material with a high ratio of width to thickness. This demand remained unsatisfied until 1927. The demand was met in a large measure by the invention and erection of what is referred to in the record as the 4-high anti-friction bearing continuous mill.

This continuous mill, it is admitted by the plaintiif, produced the desired type of material. It was necessarily large, by being continuous, required a large area on which to be constructed and was very expensive to construct and operate. These two factors, expense and space, made it unavailable to the smaller steel producers. The demand for a less expensive and smaller mill resulted in the construction of the coiler arrangement on either side of the finishing mill for the coiling and passing back and forth, by use of the coilers, the hot roll strip through the finishing mill. One of the decided advantages of the reversing mill is the speed with which the strip can be rolled. Prior to 1927, when the mechanical process came into operation, the only way in which wide sheets could be produced was a manual operation of such hot, arduous work that repeated heating of the metal in the process was necessary. Only limited lengths of from 8 to 10 feet could be rolled and, of course, the weight of a wide sheet made it impossible of production by manual labor. Under the old system the weight of the sheet was only about 70 to 90 pounds. The weight of a single strip rolled in the defendant’s mill is from 9,000 to 18,000 pounds. The maximum speed under the old system was about 250 feet per minute. This should be contrasted with the speed of the defendant’s mill of from 600 to 1,000 feet per minute.

The single stand reversing mill having coilers and coiling furnaces on opposite sides of the mill stand first came into use in 1927. This is only a portion of a rolling mill but it is that portion with which we.are concerned in this action. The other, features of the process of rolling steel are, of course, necessary and of prime importance but we are not concerned- with the mechanism of the steel mill outside of the coilers. Our problem concerns only the treatment of the hot rolled strip after it reaches the entry coiler and before it is passed on to the roll table beyond the exit coiler to the runout table or roll table.

[882]*882• The defendant’s mill charged with the infringement, is portrayed in Exhibits A and B filed with the stipulation as to the structure and operation of defendant’s hot strip mill. At the trial of the case these exhibits were again produced in the record by larger drawings and diagrams which are identified as Plaintiff's Exhibits Nos. P-6 and P-7. The diagrams are herewith set forth as a part of this opinion.

The functions of the defendant’s mill, as revealed from the record and with reference to the diagrams and exhibits, in [883]*883producing the hot roll strip from the ingot is described as follows. The steel is produced from the blast furnace in the form of an ingot in which form it is ready for finishing by rolling. The ingot is placed in a soaking pit where it is heated to a temperature of 2350 degrees Fahrenheit.- The soaking pits are not shown in the diagrams. After being withdrawn from the soaking pit the in[884]*884got is placed on the roll tables and carried to the edger. It is passed through the edger, backward and forward three times, and then carried by another roll table to the roughing mill. Before it enters the roughing mill it is descaled by a water pressure system. It passes through the roughing mill three to five times and returns to the edger for two more edging passes. From the edger .it is returned to the roughing mill for further descaling and another three to five passes through the roughing mill. It is then returned to the edger for two more passes and again returned to the roughing mill for from three to five passes. After the last pass through the roughing mill the strip then travels over four roll tables to the shear where from fifteen to twenty feet are cut from the front end. The strip is then passed into the roller hearth furnace. As the trailing end comes to the cropping shear approximately three feet are cropped from the trailing end. The strip stops momentarily for each of these shearing or cropping operations.

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