Great Lakes Carbon Corporation v. Continental Oil Company

219 F. Supp. 468, 138 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 613, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8077
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Louisiana
DecidedJune 21, 1963
DocketCiv. A. 6946
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 219 F. Supp. 468 (Great Lakes Carbon Corporation v. Continental Oil Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Great Lakes Carbon Corporation v. Continental Oil Company, 219 F. Supp. 468, 138 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 613, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8077 (W.D. La. 1963).

Opinion

HUNTER, Judge.

Plaintiff, Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, hereinafter called Great Lakes, is a very substantial, privately held corporation which is one of the world’s leading purchasers of petroleum coke. It was in the business of buying and selling petroleum coke for many years before entering into the business of manufacturing graphite electrodes for the steel industry in about 1940. It was Great Lakes’ activities in the manufacture of such electrodes which eventually led to its application for the patent here in suit and to the events which plaintiff contends gave rise to its causes of action. Defendants are Union Carbide Corporation, Continental Oil Company, and Lake Charles Chemical Corporation. Union Carbide Corporation is a very large publicly held corporation engaged primarily in the manufacture of chemicals and related products. A division of Union Carbide (National Carbon) has been engaged in the manufacturing and selling of graphite electrodes for use by the steel industry since 1928.

Continental Oil Company is a large petroleum refining and marketing company. It has refineries in a a number of locations at which crude oil is fractionated and refined into a multiplicity of products. One of the products — actually a more or less unwanted by-product — of Continental’s refining operations is ordinary petroleum coke. Continental has conducted a coking operation at its Ponca City refinery since the 1920s. A coking unit was built and went on stream at its Lake Charles, Louisiana refinery on or about January 1, 1958. Defendant, Lake Charles Chemical Corporation, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Continental Oil and its acts are the acts of Continental.

Continental sells all of the coke produced at its Ponca City refinery to Great Lakes Corporation. Great Lakes has been getting all of that coke since at least 1947 and continues to do so.

Continental sells all of the coke produced at its Lake Charles refinery to National Carbon and has done so since the coking unit was built in 1958.

Continental produces two grades of coke in each of its coking units. One of the grades of coke produced in each refinery is called either Regular or No. 2 coke. The production of regular coke is *472 not involved in this litigation. Produced in each refinery also is a second grade of coke called variously “No. 1,” “special,” “needle,” or “premium” coke.

It is the manufacture of this “special” coke at the Lake Charles Refinery which brings about this law suit. Plaintiff claims with respect thereto that the process used at the location infringes its patent (SHEA — 2,775,549) and that its alleged trade secrets have been “stolen” by defendants in connection therewith.

Plaintiff does not contend that any apparatus (or “machine”, as the statutes call it) is new. The claims of SHEA are directed to a process for making “needle coke” from the residues of more common crude oil.

Prior to the 1952 Patent Act, the statutes provided that any person who invented a new “art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter,” could obtain a patent. The 1952 Patent Act changed the word “art” to “process,” and gave this definition to the word “process” :

“(b) The term ‘process’ means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”
35 U.S.Code, § 100.

Thus, the 1952 Act gave a new meaning to the word “process” in patent law. Rohm & Haas v. Roberts Chemicals, 245 F.2d 693, 4th Cir. The 1952 Act became effective January 1, 1953, but it applies to all patents, whether applied for before or after the effective date. Southern Saw Service v. Pittsburgh-Erie Saw Corp., 239 F.2d 339, 5th Cir.

SHEA does not purport to cover needle coke per se. What plaintiff contends is that SHEA teaches a change which enabled the use of recognized equipment for the specific purpose of making needle coke 1 out of asphalt base crude oils. The-process consists of two steps. The first involves the preparation of a coking charge stock, and the second consists of coking that charged stock. The coking-charge used in the accused process consists principally of thermal tar. There is nothing new about coking thermal tar-to produce needle coke. This was done years before SHEA’s invention by Kendall Refining Company at Bradford, Pennsylvania. Plaintiff asserts, however, that the process used by Kendall in preparing the thermal tar does not. anticipate SHEA because the reduced crude used by Kendall was a paraffin base-crude and did not contain “contaminants” which interfere with the formation of the needle structure, and hence could not have been removed therefrom as taught by SHEA. However, it is conceded that thermal tar is a residuum that was produced at Continental’s Lake Charles Refinery from asphalt base crude oils (by a process that plaintiff claims as step (1) of its invention) for years before a coking unit was even considered for that refinery and is attributable in no way to Great Lakes or SHEA (plaintiff’s answer to defendants’ Interrogatory 26 on December 6, 1958). In fact, all agree-that step (1) [isolated] is standard refinery procedure, but Great Lakes asserts in essence that SHEA taught that this tar, when coked under certain conditions in a delayed coker, makes “needle coke.”'

Defendants deny each and every allegation of wrongdoing. As to the SHEA patent, defendants assert that it is neither valid nor infringed, and outline the-various defenses urged on the patent phase of this case in the simple chart which follows:

*473

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Bluebook (online)
219 F. Supp. 468, 138 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 613, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8077, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/great-lakes-carbon-corporation-v-continental-oil-company-lawd-1963.