Eastern Manufacturers, Inc. v. Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co.

16 F. Supp. 469, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2047
CourtDistrict Court, D. Delaware
DecidedSeptember 24, 1936
DocketNo. 1039
StatusPublished

This text of 16 F. Supp. 469 (Eastern Manufacturers, Inc. v. Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co.) 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
Eastern Manufacturers, Inc. v. Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co., 16 F. Supp. 469, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2047 (D. Del. 1936).

Opinion

NIELDS, District Judge.

Bill for the establishment of a trust in a certain patent and for the assignment of the patent to the plaintiff. The bill prays: “That a decree be entered herein directing defendant to make and deliver to plaintiff an assignment in writing transferring and conveying to plaintiff the entire right, title and interest in and to the aforesaid application for letters patent of the United States Serial No. 515,412 filed February 12, 1931 and in and to the aforesaid letters patent of the United States No. 1,-918,603 dated July 18, 1933; and also perpetually enjoining and restraining defendant, its officers, agents and employees, from practicing the process described in said letters patent and from committing any acts whatsoever directly or indirectly in infringement of the same; * * * ” An answer was filed denying the trust and denying that from the facts in the case the alleged trust could be construed.

[470]*470There is no disagreement between plaintiff and defendant -as to the vital facts of the case. They disagree over the legal effect of those facts. We are concerned, therefore, with the facts and not with the pleadings.

Colgate & Co., defendant’s predecessor, in 1928 was one of the large soap manufacturing companies of the country and had been in business over a century. Its main plant was in Jersey City. It manufactured both high-grade toilet soaps and the cheaper laundry soaps and soap powders. The quality of the fat or oil or fatty acids is the prime consideration in the production of high grade soaps. The price of the oil or fat is the prime consideration in the production of the cheaper soaps. It was part of the business of Colgate & Co. as a soap manufacturer to refine inferior soap making material where the raw material could be bought cheaply. When soap- is produced from natural oils and fats, glycerin is produced as a by-product. Pound for pound glycerin is much more valuable than soap. Colgate & Co. had a well-equipped laboratory to test raw materials for the manufacture of its wide range of soaps. Dr. Ittner had been chief chemist in charge of the laboratory since 1896. As oils and fats vary widely in their origin and purity, they require expert chemical analysis.

Zieley Processes Corporation was a promotion company. The men interested in it had no experience in soap making. They were financial men whose experience was along entirely different lines. Its two main lines of promotion were: (1) The production of fatty acids from petroleum; (2) the distillation of petroleum oil by the so-called high vacuum distillation process. It had a plant for experimental purposes at Garfield, N. J. The company became interested in the production of fatty acids from petroleum in 1922 through Thomas Gray, who had taken out a patent in 1915 which he assigned to the Zieley Company. This patent was the basis of its operations for a year or two. The persons who worked on the production of fatty acids from petroleum from 1921 to 1928 were Gray, Rudolph, and Solomonoff. The period is divided into the Gray period, from 1921 to 1925, and the Solomonoff period, after 1925.

In 1922 the Zieley Company considered the Gray process sufficiently developed to attempt to interest Proctor & Gamble Company in fatty acids produced by the process of that patent. There was some negotiation between Confiable representing Zieley and McCaw then of Proctor & Gamble. There is no record of this negotiation. At the time of trial, Connable was not produced and McCaw was dead. Following Connable, Gray and Rudolph tried to interest McCaw in its fatty acids for the manufacture of soap. Gray and Rudolph used the precise temperatures and pressures and obtained the same degree of conversion that characterized the Solomonoff “secret process.” The- only respect in which the Gray process differed from Solomonoff was in the use of iron apparatus instead of a noncorrosive apparatus. This latter feature was well known and did not originate with Solomonoff. In 1927 Rudolph again talked with McCaw, who was then vice president of Colgate & Co. and general manager in charge of manufacture. Rudolph sent four samples-of fatty acids to McCaw with a letter dated September 19, 1927, stating that he was specifically authorized by the Zieley Company to write the letter and send the samples. He gave the product, but not the process by which the product was made. He gave, however, the information a manufacturer requires to test samples. He concludes the letter: “We await with interest the result of your investigation of these products and would appreciate after the investigation to have the opportunity to meet your technical men for a general discussion of the matter.” There is no suggestion in this letter that there was anything secret or confidential about the samples. In fact, the samples were old products which the Zieley Company claimed it could make cheaply by its process. The four samples were sent in gallon cans containing three or four pounds per can. An examination of the samples showed that the fatty acids differed from the ordinary fats and oils Colgate & Co. were using in their soap manufacture. The samples contained impurities. Colgate & Co. tried to distill off the objectionable impurities with superheated steam. They reported “the soap after this treatment has a less intense odor than that prepared from the original acid and it is not impossible that the more prolonged (than one hour) steaming may remove the objectionable odor.” The investigation of Colgate & Co. showed the product had this odor long before there was any disclosure of the process.

[471]*471When the Zieley Company approached Colgate & Co. in 1927 to interest it in its fatty acid process, Zieley was exploiting the Solomonoff process for producing fatty acids from petroleum. The only feature of the Solomonoff process which had not been previously carried out by Rudolph and Gray was the substitution of a noncorrosive material for the converter instead of iron. The claims presented in the Solomonoff application covering the use of a noncorrodible container were rejected by the Patent Office on prior art patents showing this feature, and they were canceled.

The Gray patent, granted in 1915 and assigned to the Zieley Company in 1925, specifies the temperature and pressure of the so-called “O” process as well as the product. Rudolph, plaintiff’s expert at the trial, testified that he was familiar with the literature relating to producing fatty acids from petroleum and before December, 1927, had discussed the prior art with Varney, the patent attorney of Zieley. Dr. Ittner, chief chemist of Colgate & Co., testified that he followed the patents and literature on producing fatty acids from petroleum. He knew that during the War there was a scarcity of oils and fats and that Germany had worked on this problem. After the War he asked a friend visiting Germany to bring back a sample of soap made from petroleum. Dr. Dreger, a chemist of Colgate, had a course in organic chemistry at college in 1921 where the making of fatty acids from petroleum was covered.

In the Solomonoff “O” process, you take a petroleum product such as paraffin or scale wax, and by a chemical reaction with the oxygen of the air you combine the oxygen chemically with the hydrocarbon in the paraffin and produce fatty acids. Fatty acid is an oxidation product of the paraffin. For many years it had been known that if you take paraffin and subject it to oxidation with air at high temperature you form fatty acid. According to the representatives of Zieley, this Solomonoff process was a cheap process for carrying out that old reaction.

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Bluebook (online)
16 F. Supp. 469, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2047, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/eastern-manufacturers-inc-v-colgate-palmolive-peet-co-ded-1936.