National Electric Signaling Co. v. Telefunken Wireless Telegeaph Co.

209 F. 856, 1913 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1154
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedJune 12, 1913
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 209 F. 856 (National Electric Signaling Co. v. Telefunken Wireless Telegeaph Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
National Electric Signaling Co. v. Telefunken Wireless Telegeaph Co., 209 F. 856, 1913 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1154 (S.D.N.Y. 1913).

Opinion

HAND, District Judge.

I group the 14 claims here in suit into three classes: First, the claims for the direct transformation of the current into motion, 1, 4, 22, 23, and 34; second, the claims for “tuning,” 6, 10, 13, 28, 29, 30, 33 and 35; and, third, claim 15, the “low-resistance” claim, with which also belong claims 22 and 23. Some of the “tuning” claims are also claims for direct transformation, but they need no separate consideration from the direct transformation claims themselves.

[1] First, I will consider the “transformation” claims, some of which I quite agree, as mere matter of wording cover the defendant’s apparatus. A question may be raised about claims 22 and 23, which are “low-resistance” claims like claim 15, but all are broadly based upon the fundamental idea I have mentioned. It is perhaps a little strange that every claim concludes with the phrase “substantially as set forth” except Nos. 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35. While these words have as matter of law no real effect at all upon the claim, still they sometimes signify the draughtsman’s sense that his terms, while very broad, are to be read upon the actual disclosure made. The question in this case is whether, in spite of their broad language, the claims must not be limited in interpretation to the disclosure actually set forth, or to some derivative of it which shall owe some suggestion to the disclosure. If the claims require no such limitation, then Fessenden can claim a valid monopoly upon every wireless receiver which directly transforms the energy of the wave-train into the energy of motion, that is, without the intervention of some relay battery, and the defendant is certainly an infringer.

At the outset it will be clearest to see how much similarity there is between the two devices and how much difference. Each system has a completely closed receiving wire from antenna to ground, including the detecting devices. This applies as well when the detecting apparatus is in the secondary of a transformer as when it is in conductively connected series. In each the only energy which moves the object that sensibly affects the eye or ear is the oscillatory current; in short, the electromotive force is transformed into motion. With this it seems to me the resemblance absolutely stops, because neither is the current operative in'the same way, nor is the apparatus in the least alike, nor does one give the faintest clue to the discovery of the other.

To justify these assertions I had best take up the operation of each. Fessenden makes in his receiving wire two loops, between which the oscillating pulses create a magnetic field of one sign when the oscillation moves in one way, and of another when it moves in the opposite. Within this field he hangs a metal ring by a fine filament, which interposes but the slightest impediment to any torque which the ring may re[858]*858.ceive. The magnetic field between the loops or coils sets up voltages in the ring, which in turn create in it a current. If the ring be hung at a given angle to the coils, the interaction of the field with the current in the ring, as the current oscillates, creates a constant torque upon the ring, enough to overcome its inertia. Mr. Clay says that the result is a rectification of the magnetic field analogous to the rectification of the current itself by defendant’s “rectifier,” but I can find no evidence of the sort. The explanation I have given is Fessenden’s own explanation in his paper of November 28, 1899, and I find nothing further in the testimony of either Stone or Kennedy. It is true that Stone describes the torque as the product of the reaction of the two fields, one-produced by the current in the coils, and the other produced by the induced current in the ring; but I think it can make no difference whether field of the coils operates upon an induced current or upon an induced field. In either case there is no mention of rectification of the-field, and the phenomenon is nowhere explained. I cannot assume that-the field is changed in character, and I do not, of course, understand the phenomenon, which is confessedly complicated.

In the defendant’s apparatus there is interposed in the circuit which' receives the oscillating current a substance of very high resistance indeed, called the “detector.” The functional characteristic of this mechanism, whose structure I need not explain in detail, is that, while it offers a high resistance to oscillations in both directions, it offers more to those in one than to those in the other. As a consequence, a greater quantity of current passes through the detector when the oscillation is in one direction than when it is in the other, and indeed the part which does not pass through is turned back so as to flow in the opposite direction. There is thus created in an ingeniously associated circuit containing a telephone a series of current differentials always in one direction, which are operatively precisely the equivalent of a direct current in the circuit itself, and which can therefore be made to energize the coils of the telephone magnet, thus making the diaphragm respond.

It seems clear to me from this explanation that the defendant’s method of operation owes nothing to Fessenden. It proceeds by modifying the current itself, turning back a part of it, and sending it the other way. It creates out of an oscillating current a direct current, and, after it has done that, it interposes the very obvious appliance for detecting a current, the telephone. But Fessenden'did not modify the current at all; he is not even shown to have modified the magnetic fields. He did take advantage of the reaction of these fields upon the ring to move the ring, but it was that motion which was the first unidirectional movement of either current or mass. The defendant, it is true, for each whole wave-train produces a movement in the diaphragm of the telephone, but even this is not detectable by the senses, because it is only the vibration of the diaphragm produced by a succession of wave-trains which gives the note .that the ear receives. Perhaps it would, however, be fair to allow that in this latter respect the two are analogous, for the succession of wave-trains amplifies the motion of Fessenden’s ring, and in the microphonic adaptation pro[859]*859duces the telephone note by variations in the, battery current. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the apparatus and its operation is quite different in each case.

Furthermore, when we consider what the defendant owed to Fessenden, we see that it was nothing but the idea of transforming the energy of the oscillating current into motion. All that Fessenden did was to apply to the detection of these particular oscillations a detector theretofore known for-alternating currents generally, which, as Dr. Kennedy concedes, “was recognized at the date of the appearance of Northrup’s article” as “capable of indicating the presence of Hertzian waves.” He discovered nothing about the current or its nature; he discovered nothing about the galvanometer which he used. What he did do was to make a very handy adaptation of Northrup’s galvanometer to thi. particular instance, and no one ought, I think, to question his title to a patent for just what he did. The defendant, however, made no use of anything shown in that patent at all; this galvanometer was perfectly useless in helping his discovery, because he was seeking to change the current itself, after which the path was open to any electrician ; it was only the detection of a very minute direct current of electricity.

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Related

Marconi Wireless Co. v. United States
320 U.S. 1 (Supreme Court, 1943)
Fessenden v. Radio Corp. of America
22 F. Supp. 777 (D. Delaware, 1938)
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8 F. Supp. 100 (E.D. New York, 1934)
Kintner v. Atlantic Communication Co.
241 F. 956 (S.D. New York, 1917)
Kintner v. Atlantic Communication Co.
240 F. 716 (Second Circuit, 1917)

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Bluebook (online)
209 F. 856, 1913 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1154, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/national-electric-signaling-co-v-telefunken-wireless-telegeaph-co-nysd-1913.