Goodrich v. Ford Motor Co.

97 F.2d 427, 38 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 446, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 3793
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedMay 4, 1938
DocketNo. 7357
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 97 F.2d 427 (Goodrich v. Ford Motor Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Goodrich v. Ford Motor Co., 97 F.2d 427, 38 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 446, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 3793 (6th Cir. 1938).

Opinion

HICKS, Circuit Judge.

Suit - against Ford Motor Company, appellee, for infringement of claims 1, -2, and 3 of letters patent 1,285,129, issued November 19, 1918, to George N. Goodrich, for a “Multi-Cylinder Engine.” The chief defenses were noninfringement and noninvention. The District Court decreed that the patent was valid but not infringed.

The patent related to fuel distribution in and manifolding for multi-cylinder engines, and especially those having two opposed blocks of cylinders known as the-“V-8.” Simply stated, such engines are power plants, designed for automobiles, to transmute the explosive power of gasoline' into smooth-flowing motion. Obviously, if the crankshaft of the motor is not properly counterweighted, or if the explosions within its various cylinders are variable, the power generated would be irregular and result in vibration.

Goodrich testified: “I have personally driven V-8 engines at sixty miles an hour where the vibration was so severe as to transmit it to the steering wheel,— * * my hands were completely numbed. * * I had to reduce speed. Anyone would be led to believe it would be almost an impossibility to hold that engine in the frame of the car. * * * That was, you might say, the motivation for the serious thought that resulted in the issuance of this patent in suit.”

His claim is that all three claims of the patent are infringed by the V-8 cylinder engines manufactured by appellee since 1933.

The unit of power in a gasoline motor is a single cylinder, into the firing chamber [428]*428of which' a gaseous mixture of air and gasoline is introduced through a pipe from the carburetor. On either side of this chamber are valves which open and close periodically. The feed valve is at the terminus of the pipe leading from the carburetor and the exhaust valve at the entrance of the pipe leading to the exhaust. The explosion takes place within the cylinder and its force is expended against the piston which slides back and forth therein. The piston is movably joined to the crankshaft by a connecting rod in such a way that the crankshaft revolves in an axis at right angles to the axis of operation of the piston.

The part where the connecting rod communicates its power to the crankshaft is called the “throw.” The shape of the crankshaft controls the valve action and also the shape of the manifolding, which latter is the gist of the law suit.

As the crankshaft makes one complete revolution, the piston makes two strokes, one up and one down. Revolve the shaft twice, through 720 degrees of circular motion, and the piston makes four strokes. Four full strokes of the piston are necessary for one power stroke in a power producing cycle. The explosion takes place just as the piston passes the top of its stroke, and starts downward. Both valves are closed and the force of the explosion is exerted on the downwardly moving piston. This is the “working” stroke. When the piston reaches bottom and starts back up, the exhaust valve opens, and the movement of the piston drives the spent gases out through the exhaust valve. This is the “exhaust” stroke. Again, as the piston starts down the second time, the exhaust valve closes, the intake valve opens and the new charge is sucked into the chamber from the carburetor by the vacuum behind the piston. This is the “intake” stroke. Finally, at approximately the time the piston starts ba,ck up on the fourth stroke, both valves close and the gas is compressed by the piston head into a small space. This is the “compression” stroke and the cylinder is now set for another working stroke. These four operations give rise to the term “four phase” or “four cycle” motors.

With a four throw crankshaft of the type of appellant’s Exhibit No. 3 and a motor of four cylinders, each cylinder going through the four 180 degree cycles crankshaft motion, and each firing at the beginning of 720 degrees of crankshaft revolution, there are only two possible firing orders. Cylinder one fires when its throw is up, throws two and three come up and either two or three must fire, then four comes up and its cylinders fire, and then two or three. The order then is, 1, 2, 4, 3 or 1, 3, 4, 2.in endless succession.

The throws of this crankshaft, being 180 degrees apart as it revolves, are in the same plane, so that the crankshaft is flat. Thus, .the shaft tends to be in balance, since each throw is offset by one 180 degrees away, there being two throws on- one side of the bearing and two on the other.

The cylinders of a four-cylinder motor were ordinarily placed vertically over the axis of the crankshaft. The V-8 motors on the other hand had two banks of four cylinders each, inclined toward each other, usually at an angle of 90 degrees, and converged toward an intersecting line, within which the axis of their common crankshaft lay. The early V-8 motors, with one or two possible exceptions, used the ordinary, flat, 180 degree crankshaft, having' only four throws, the piston rods from directly opposite cylinders, one in each bank, engaging the same throw. Thus, the earlier V-8 engines actually comprised two four-cylinder engines acting upon one ordinary four-throw, flat crankshaft, with the explosions in their cylinders, occurring in a continuous and uniform succession, with intervals of 90 degrees of crankshaft rotation, between the beginnings of each two immediately succeeding cycles.

The firing sequence dictated by the flat crankshaft then was the alternate firing, first of a cylinder in one bank, and then of a cylinder in the other, with a continuous repetition of such bank-to-bank firings.

. • Then came the so-called 90-degree crankshaft, bringing the complications in firing and manifolding which led to this suit.

The only types of this 90-degree crankshaft of interest here are: (1) The shaft shown in figure 4 of the Goodrich patent in which throws 1 and 2 were in the same plane with each other, but 180 degrees apart, and throws 3 and 4 likewise in the same plane with each other, and 180 degrees apart, but lying in a plane at an angle of 90 degrees to the plane of the [429]*429throws of 1 and 2; and (2) the shaft used by appellee in which throws 2 and 3 arc in the same plane 180 degrees apart, and throws 1 and 4 in the same plane and 180 degrees apart, but in a plane at an angle of 90 degrees to the plane of throws 2 and 3.

With the use of the 90-degree crankshaft, it was mechanically impossible to use the simple hack and forth firing order of the 180-degree shaft. The firing order used by appellee wherein the first cylinder in the left bank was designated 1, and the others in order, 2, 3, 4, and the first cylinder in the right bank 5 and the others in order 6, 7, 8, was 1, 5, 4, 8, 6, 3, 7, 2. In the Goodrich specification the cylinders in the left bank were numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 from front to hack and those in the right bank 8, 7, 6, 5, from front to back. Goodrich’s optional firing order was 1, 3, 6, 4, 5, 8, 2, 7. It will be seen that these two firing orders have one thing in common, namely, that two cylinders in the right bank and two cylinders in the left hank have immediately successive firing orders. In appellee they were 2 and 1 in the left bank and 8 and 6 in the right. In Goodrich 1 and 3 in the left bank and 5 and 8 in the right. This was unavoidable, being inherent in the 90-degree crankshaft construction.

This successive firing of two cylinders in one hank in advance of the firing of a single cylinder in the other was the vice that Goodrich claimed to correct.

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Bluebook (online)
97 F.2d 427, 38 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 446, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 3793, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/goodrich-v-ford-motor-co-ca6-1938.