Oilgear Co. v. J. N. Lapointe Co.

33 F.2d 929, 1929 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1362
CourtDistrict Court, D. Connecticut
DecidedJune 28, 1929
DocketNo. 1893
StatusPublished

This text of 33 F.2d 929 (Oilgear Co. v. J. N. Lapointe Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Oilgear Co. v. J. N. Lapointe Co., 33 F.2d 929, 1929 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1362 (D. Conn. 1929).

Opinion

THOMAS, District Judge.

The bill in this case charges the defendant with infringement of letters patent, No. 1,468,595, granted to plaintiff on September 18, 1923, upon an 'application filed by Walter Ferris on October 26, 1922, for a broaching machine. Claims 3,11, and 12 are in issue.

In its answer denying invention and infringement, the defendant also pleads a counterclaim alleging that the plaintiff is infringing its Lapointe patent, No. 1,109,847, issued September 8, 1914, on an application filed August 23, 1913. Claims 6 and 7 of this patent are in issue.

The chief defense to the plaintiff’s ease, in fact the only one, is defendants denial of invention in the patented combination set forth in the Ferris patent on- the ground that it is a mere double-use or aggregation of known devices,

As to the counterclaim, the defenses set forth by the plaintiff are the usual ones of noninfringement and invalidity by reason of anticipation by and lack of invention over prior patents.

The three claims of the Ferris patent relied upon by the plaintiff read as follows:

“3. In a broaching machine the combination of a member for actuating a broaching tool, hydraulic means for driving said member, and a reversible, variable displacement pump for delivering liquid to said means to maintain a substantially steady advance of the broaching tool at a predetermined rate irrespective of variations in tool resistance or pressure.”
“11. In a pull broaching machine, the combination of a tool pulling member, hydraulic means for driving said member, a variable displacement pump for delivering a driving liquid to said hydraulic means at a rate corresponding to pump displacement, and means for varying the displacement of said pump to regulate the rate of travel of said member.”
“12. In a -pull broaching machine the combination of a tool pulling member, a piston and cylinder for driving said member, a variable displacement pump for delivering a driving liquid to said cylinder at a rate corresponding to pump displacement, and means for varying pump displacement to regulate the rate of travel of said member.”

The invention of the Ferris patent relates to a broaching machine and more particularly to that type which is known in the art as a pull broaching machine — so called because the tool which is designated a broach is pulled through or over the work. A broach [930]*930is a cutting tool in the form of a straight steel rod or bar provided with teeth of progressively increasing sizes, to be pushed or pulled through a hole for increasing, shaping, or refinishing the hole, or, in some cases, to be pushed or pulled over a surface of metal, for reducing, shaping, or finishing the surface.

As appears from the patent in suit and also- from the record, broaches and broaching machines were old long prior to the filing date of the patent in suit. In all of these machines the tool is moved in a straight line, back and forth, in relation to the work to be operated upon. Prior to the date of the patent, the most common method of driving the tool in standard broaching practice was by the use of strictly mechanical mechanisms such as the well-known serew-and-nut drive or the raek-and-pinion drive. In another class of broaching, hydraulic presses were used to push the tool through the work. Several machines of the last mentioned type are illustrated in Yiall’s book entitled “Broaches and Broaching” published in 1918 —Defendant’s Exhibit Z.

The patent in suit describes, and the claims in issue call for, a hydraulic broaching machine, the details of which need not be here recited. It is sufficient to say that the machine comprises a tool actuating erosshead 16, mounted for reciprocation between a pair of guides 17. This crosshead is driven primarily by a piston rod 18 connected thereto and to a pis ton 19 within a cylinder 12. The opposite ends of the cylinder are in direct communication through pipes 24 and 25, respectively, with the two sides of a hydraulic circuit established by a constant speed variable displacement reversible pump 26. The pump described in the Eerris patent is of the multieylinder type, and its characteristic feature is that, although driven at constant speed, by simple adjustment the pistons can be set so as not to move at all in their respective cylinders, in which case they do not displace or deliver any fluid to the cylinder 12 — and yet by other adjustments the pistons can be set so as to deliver fluid at any predetermined rate in one direction or the other direction, whereby the rate of travel of the piston 19 may be regulated at will. In other words, the pump delivers a driving liquid to the cylinder 12 at a rate corresponding to pump displacement. Due to these adjustments, the broaching tool may be stopped when required in the operation of the machine, and the tool may be driven at different speeds during its working and return strokes.

Defendant contends that the patent in suit is invalid because prior to its grant variable displacement reversible pumps were well known and were used for directly operating machines of various .kinds, and were proposed for driving broaches, although not actually used for such purpose, and that consequently it does not amount to invention to combine a pump of this type with a cylinder, where it acts to give to a piston a reciprocating motion in a straight line, the piston and cylinder construction being also well known, and to actuate thereby a pull broach. And so the defendant argues that in the aggregation of these well-known elements, each does what it had formerly done in the instrument or machine from which it was borrowed, and henee that eaeh element operates in the old way and produces no new result.

But I conclude that this contention is not supported by the record. The hydraulic broaching machines to which the record refers are used to push the broaches through the work, running from 3 to 4% feet per minute. See pages 16 and 23 of Yiall, supra. They cannot be used for doing pull broaching work and were never intended for such use because tools of pull broaching machines are long, slender tools which would be rendered useless during and after the first operation if mounted upon or connected to the hydraulic mechanisms described in Yiall. All strictly mechanical pull broaching machines, the screw-and-nut type and the raek-andpinion type machines, broach slowly. They run from 3 feet per minute to 5 feet for the screw type machine, and from 4 feet 6 inches to 7 feet 4 inches for the raek-and-pinion type. For very light work these speeds may be exceeded, particularly in the raek-andpinion machines. However,'this type of machine (now practically obsolete) had a fatal defeet, and the work turned out by them was imperfect because the broach operated by them had a tendency to “jump,” which resulted in a “wavy” product. For this reason the serew-and-nut drive was almost universally adopted, because it insured a positive and uniform advance of the tool, irrespective of the wide variations of pull required by the range of large and small broaching tools, which are used on machines of a given pulling capacity. It was evidently due to this advantage that the screw type machines were almost universally adopted prior to the grant of the patent in suit — and this in spite of their slow rate of working speed, and although a good many broaching tools were broken while cutting because of a rotary twist imparted to the tool by the [931]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
33 F.2d 929, 1929 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1362, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oilgear-co-v-j-n-lapointe-co-ctd-1929.