Devex Corp. v. General Motors Corp.

316 F. Supp. 1376, 167 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 141, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10322
CourtDistrict Court, D. Delaware
DecidedSeptember 8, 1970
DocketCiv. A. No. 3058
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 316 F. Supp. 1376 (Devex Corp. v. General Motors Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Delaware primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Devex Corp. v. General Motors Corp., 316 F. Supp. 1376, 167 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 141, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10322 (D. Del. 1970).

Opinion

OPINION

CALEB M. WRIGHT, Chief Judge.

This is an action for infringement of Claim Four of Reissue Patent No. 24,017. It has been tried on the merits without a jury and the Court has heard posttrial argument.

DISCUSSION

Claim Four is now the creature of judicial construction. Its validity was saved by a narrow reading in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Devex v. General Motors, 321 F.2d 234 (7th Cir. 1963), applied here as the law of the case, Devex v. General Motors, 263 F. Supp. 17, 23-24 (D.Del.1967).1 It is not the law, and the premise has not been seriously advanced, that proof of literal infringement would entitle plaintiffs to a judgment.

In reversing the lower court decision that the process was unpatentable because obvious from the prior art, the Court of Appeals relied on evidence that “new and unexpected results flow from the conjunction of the elements defined in the drawing process * * *." 321 F.2d at 237. The new and unexpected results are not found in the language of the claim, but they are now its essence. Similar processes with different results do not infringe. This Court said in an earlier opinion, “If an allegedly infringing process falls within the literal language of the claim, but can be shown to operate in a different manner from the patented process, then there is no infringement.” Devex v. General Motors, 263 F.Supp. 17, 25, 26 (D.Del. 1967).2 Plaintiffs were obliged, therefore, to show by a preponderance of the evidence, that the accused processes duplicated the critical results.

As in many patent eases, the Court found itself confronted with a mass of technical data and analysis. The evidence consisted largely of tests prepared by experts for each side in preparation for litigation. The test results and expert conclusions are conflicting, as might be expected, and, even to a layman, it appears that objectivity, the unremitting master of every laboratory, has not always been a fixed star in the inquiries conducted and presented to the Court. Although the errors, mostly of omission, seem to have occurred from diligence in the pursuit of proof rather [1378]*1378than from bad faith or fraud, their presence has compounded the burden of one unskilled in the technology attempting to reach a correct result.

Because the issues are vigorously disputed by learned men of science, the outcome depending entirely on which tests, analyses, and explanations the Court adopts, it is well to recall, as did Judge Kirkpatrick, “that we are engaged in the determination of a dispute between two parties in a court of law, rather than in an excursion into the realm of scientific research, and we must approach the question from the standpoint of the rules which the law has established for resolving the controverted issue.” Shimadzu v. Electric Storage Battery Co., 17 F.Supp. 42, 52 (E.D.Pa.1936). In making findings of fact, the Court is not conducting laboratory analyses, but applying a legal judgment to the evidence before it. It is making a determination that facts are proved or not proved, that the party who has the burden on a given issue has sustained it or not. A finding against the party with the burden, as the Court makes here, does not require absolute conviction that the opposing party has proved a contrary ease. Any other approach would require judges to know more about the technology of a patent than the experts whose disagreement brings the dispute to court.

Plaintiffs were obliged to prove that a coaction occurs in the accused processes among the soap, borax and phosphate at high temperatures and pressures, causing new compounds, including but not limited to glassy amorphous compounds, to be formed, and inhibiting the formation of water insoluble compounds. These results were demonstrated by plaintiffs’ witness Henry Friedberg and relied on by the Court of Appeals to sustain the claim’s validity. 321 F.2d at 234. This Court heard nineteen days of live testimony, which comprised most of the expert opinion relied on by the parties. It has reviewed the evidence and the exhibits offered to it and to the courts which considered validity, and it concludes that plaintiffs have not met their burden in establishing the essential results. The Court has no doubt that defendant’s processes are effective, beneficial and an improvement over earlier solutions to their lubricating problems, nor that they utilize some of the learning upon which the patent is based. Use of that learning is not actionable, however, unless it produces the critical results.3

THE NEW COMPOUNDS

Plaintiffs’ expert Henry Friedberg was again a key witness at the infringement trial. Plaintiffs relied almost solely on his tests and analyses to show that the new compounds are formed in the accused process. The Court was not comfortable, however, with Friedberg’s reliance on his earlier experience with tests on the patented process to justify shortcuts in analysis of the accused ones. He failed to repeat his tests on the accused processes, to develop any standard charts, and to make any tests on the accused process without borax; he was quick to accept minimal evidence to identify the purported new compounds. His conviction was no substitute for the doubts implanted by probing crossexamination, and the Court was unpersuaded that the coaction occurred and new compounds formed even before defendant began its case.

The testimony of Dr. Martin Buerger concluded the issue. Dr. Buerger was a convincing witness, confident in his methods and his conclusions yet honest in their limitations. He found no evidence of the new compounds identified by Friedberg, and plaintiffs did little to shake the strength of his testimony. His conclusions were in accord with the findings of defendant’s other expert, Dr. Cheever, and although Dr. Cheever lacked the confident demeanor and commitment to objectivity displayed by Dr. Buerger, that they should agree on this point is [1379]*1379significant, and it strengthens the finding that defendant’s evidence was on the whole more convincing.

AMORPHOUS COMPOUNDS

Plaintiffs relied on the results of Friedberg’s X-ray charts to establish the existence of the glassy amorphous compounds supposedly produced by the coaction. It is undisputed however,, that in most cases such compounds are not discoverable, much less identifiable by X-ray analysis. Friedberg admitted that the basis for his conclusion, the flattening out of the tracings, could be due to the wiping action of the deformation process. The Court could not conclude that the amorphous compounds were present when the only evidence was a test not designed to disclose them.

WATER INSOLUBLE COMPOUNDS

The debate centered around zinc stearate, since it was that substance which was created by the prior art German process and the inhibition of which Hen-ricks, the patentee, specifically claimed as an advance. On this issue again, there was no reason to disbelieve Friedberg’s statement that he found no zinc stearate, but his failure to identify, or even to search extensively for, the peaks at the low angles was unsettling. When defendant’s explanation that the low angle peaks actually represent a type of basic zinc stearate, admittedly not recorded in the ASTM files but chemically logical nevertheless, was presented, the Court found itself in a quandary.

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Related

H.H. Robertson Co. v. Bargar Metal Fabricating Co.
666 F. Supp. 1027 (N.D. Ohio, 1987)
Devex Corp. v. General Motors Corp.
569 F. Supp. 1354 (D. Delaware, 1983)
General Motors Corp. v. Devex Corp.
461 U.S. 648 (Supreme Court, 1983)
Devex Corporation v. General Motors Corporation
667 F.2d 347 (Third Circuit, 1982)
Devex Corp. v. General Motors Corp.
667 F.2d 347 (Third Circuit, 1981)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
316 F. Supp. 1376, 167 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 141, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10322, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/devex-corp-v-general-motors-corp-ded-1970.