Cookingham v. Warren Bros.

3 F.2d 899, 1925 U.S. App. LEXIS 3828
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 2, 1925
DocketNo. 4171
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 3 F.2d 899 (Cookingham v. Warren Bros.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cookingham v. Warren Bros., 3 F.2d 899, 1925 U.S. App. LEXIS 3828 (9th Cir. 1925).

Opinion

HUNT, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). Our understanding of Warren’s invention is that the mineral aggregate detailed by him of itself resists displacement by traffic. Stability is obtained by following his idea, and is due to the arrangement of the mineral • structure which enables the use of a softer asphalt than would be otherwise practical, and'this is so by reason of the fact that a greater proportion of the wear and strain is carried by the mineral elements than by the binding constituent.

An unusually long history of litigation surrounds the Warren patent. In Warren Bros. Co. v. Owosso (1909) 166 F. 309, 92 C. C. A. 227, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit construed the Warren patent, and through ' Judge Lurton said: “Warren’s invention, shortly stated, consists in the discovery that an aggregate of large and small pieces of stone, together with a certain proportion of stone dust, all mixed together and thoroughly permeated with bitumen or asphalt, results, when set, in a compact, stable structure, and is less liable to disintegrate from traffic or weather than- any other method of grading or arranging the mineral constituents. Under the evidence, the particles are more compact in their relation to each other, and there is a minimum of friction in their interaction. The larger pieces of stone withstand the tendency of the small grains or dust to slip by each other and change the form of the pavement by disintegration and lumpy spots. * “ * The fundamental idea of Warren is not that the ‘density’ of his composition gives the stability which he claims, but that the mineral aggregate should of itself resist displacement by traffic.”

A similar understanding of the achievement of Warren was expressed by Judge Jones in the Circuit Court of Alabama (Warren Bros. Co. v. City of Montgomery, 172 F. 414), and by Judge Sessions in the District Court of Michigan (Warren Bros. Co. v. City of Grand Rapids, 216 F. 364), and by Judge Dickinson in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Warren Bros. Co. v. Evans, 234 F. 657). Judge Dickinson there referred to the contribution of Warren as the recognition of a fact that, “If a delim.ited spaee be occupied, as nearly as may be, by broken material of a‘ uniform unit size of the parts of which it is made up, the proportion of the total volume of the space which will be void or unoccupied by the material will be about the same, no matter what the 'size of the unit parts. If it is desired to relatively reduce the voids, this result is accomplished,- not by reducing the size of the unit parts (still retaining their uniformity), but by varying the sizes of the parts. The desired condition of a road when perfected is that the material of which it is composed should present the feature of a solid mass, in that the whole road space should be free from voids. Time and use direct their efforts toward bringing this about, and would eventually accomplish this result were it not for the faster working disrupting influences of water, frost, and the displacing pressure of heavy travel. This solidity must, in consequence, be produced before the road is used. The ideal construction is then the mosaic. The large voids between the large units to be filled as nearly as may be with units as large as the spaee will accommodate and to repeat this [901]*901down to the smallest units, and then to cement the whole by a binder, so that you have a road unit made up of solid material.”

In the District Court of New York (Warren Bros. Co. v. New York, 187 F. 831, 109 C. C. A. 591), Judge Coxe discussed the patent and agreed with the decision in the Owosso Case. The Court of Appeals affirmed his opinion. Recurring to the decision of Judge Dickinson in Evans v. Warren Bros. Co. (D. C.) 234 F. 657, we find it was reversed (240 F. 696, 153 C. C. A. 494); but the ground of reversal was that there was no infringement by Evans, who used a composition with but a single grade of stone, namely, that which passed through a three-quarter inch mesh and that which was caught on a half inch mesh. The court said that all the grades from a half inch down to sand were excluded, and that there was a “jump” as distinguished from intermediate serial grading, directly down to a fine void-filling material, whose coarsest component is sand. The differeñSation so pointed out emphasizes the view that the Warren patent contemplates a gradation of successive sizes of stone to the end that there may be obtained that interlocking- effect which gives the stability to the invention. In the later case of Warren Bros. Co. v. Pace (D. C.) 247 F. 117, Judge Clarke with apparent doubt of its validity, upheld the patent, but ruled that there was no infringement by the use of the mixture employed by Paco. It is to be noted, however, that Judge Clarke rested his doubt of the accuracy of the Owosso decision ehielly upon an affidavit of one Page contained in the record then before him.

We have referred to the prior adjudications, not that they are obligatory upon us, but because they are the carefully considered opinions and decisions of learned courts upon the main question involved in the instant ease. They demonstrate that the question of the validity of the Warren patent has been severely and extensively litigated, and that after critical examinations the invention has been sustained. We should therefore look upon the decisions with a deference suggestive of the importance of uniformity of ruling. Mast, Foos & Co. v. Stover Mfg. Co., 177 U. S. 485, 20 S. Ct. 708, 44 L. Ed. 856. It is proper to say at this point that the pavement laid by defendant in all essential particulars is in aeeord with the formula of Warren, the mineral aggregate in the Huber pavement containing a continuing succession of graded sizes, starting with 1%-ineh or 1%-inch material, down to the 200-mesh material, called dust or powder. It is clear that the voids are less than 21 per cent.; and that the percentages of stone greater than l^-ineh and material between l^-inch and dust or impalpable powder, are such as clearly to establish infringement.

Counsel for defendant elaborate their defense of prior use by testimony with respect to pieces of pavement laid by Blake in Denver about 1892. There was testimony addressed to the precise material Blake used, and what type of base he used, and to the effect that his method and material were such as are covered by claims 5, 6, and 11 of the Warren patent. On the other hand, plaintiffs testimony with equal force tended to show that in two pieces laid by Blake what he did was largely experimental and was abandoned. With respect to another piece — the McGovern alley pavement in Denver — Blake seems to have nsed a graded mineral aggregate which embodied the idea of Warren’s patent. But such use was not the result of adopting a formula in an effort to obtain a graded mixture of determined proportions of different materials; it was rather an unappreciated and accidental production which was neither repeated nor regarded as successful in teaching anything of value to the paving art. The Owosso Case, supra. Moreover, there is evidence tending to prove that Blake’s gravel mixture used in two of his Denver pieces was used only as a base, having wearing surfaces of sheet asphalt. This is important, for Warren deals only with the wearing surface, an improvement in the main upper surface. His problem is readily distinguishable from that of constructing a base the function of which is to give a good foundation and support for the upper of wearing surface. And the Denver pavements should be judged by what they were as originally laid.

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3 F.2d 899, 1925 U.S. App. LEXIS 3828, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cookingham-v-warren-bros-ca9-1925.