O'Leary v. Liggett Drug Co.

53 F. Supp. 288, 59 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 433, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1889
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedNovember 30, 1943
DocketCivil Action No. 47
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 53 F. Supp. 288 (O'Leary v. Liggett Drug Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
O'Leary v. Liggett Drug Co., 53 F. Supp. 288, 59 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 433, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1889 (S.D. Ohio 1943).

Opinion

NEVIN, District Judge.

This is a suit for patent infringement. The patent in suit is No. 1,971,793, issued August 28, 1934, to William J. O’Leary (now deceased), assignor to Walker & Dybvig, a partnership, on application filed November 11, 1927. It is for an “Electrical Apparatus” and relates to synchronous motors.

The patent contains fifteen claims. Of these, only claims 3, 6 and 7 are in issue.

It is stipulated (Exhibits 1, H, and Rec. pp. 89-92) that defendant, The Liggett Drug Company, sells an electric clock manufactured by the E. Ingraham Company, of Bristol, Connecticut, and it is charged that the motor in this Ingraham clock, model MK 210 (Ex. 10), constitutes an infringement of the three claims just referred to.

It is further stipulated that defendant, The Liggett Drug Company, sells what is known as the “Westclox” electric clock, (Ex. 8), which is manufactured by the General Time Instruments Corporation, Westclox Division. It is alleged that the motor in this clock also infringes claims 3, 6 and 7 of the patent in suit.

The bill of complaint was filed on October 12, 1939. Plaintiffs are Lucy B. O’Leary, assignee, and the Rotor Clock Company— an Ohio corporation- — an exclusive licensee, both residing in the Southern District of Ohio. Defendant, The Liggett Drug Company, is a corporation of the State of Delaware, having a place of business in Dayton, Ohio. The title to the patent and rights thereunder in the plaintiffs and the jurisdiction of the court are admitted.

It is agreed, however, that the manufacturers hereinabove referred to are defending this action and are to be bound by the results. As to this, the record (p. 10) shows as follows : “Mr. Byron: (of counsel for defendant) Our position is just this, your Honor. The manufacturers are here defending the defendants. We do so openly and avowedly and now to the knowledge of the plaintiffs. So that a decision for or against the defendants in cases 47 and 49 will inure to the benefit or be against the manufacturers, so that there will be estoppel so far as the questions of infringement and validity are concerned. It will work both ways.”

There are several defenses set up in the answer, including invalidity, non-infringement and laches.

In his patent, the patentee states, inter alia: “This invention relates to devices which are adapted to operate at a synchronous speed, and more particularly to a synchronous device of this character having an unwound armature rotatably mounted in an electromagnetic field. Another object of the invention is the provision of a synchronous device of this character which is simple in construction and which is adapted to operate smoothly at a speed which is constant and dependent only on the frequency of the alternating current supplied to the device.”

Paintiffs assert that: “O’Leary made a great and meritorious inventive step forward in the synchronous motor art, when he took the utterly simple motor of two poles and one core of the prior art and divided up the poles into a number of salients, so that on opposite sides of his armature, he had a series of projections all of the same polarity and obtained a small, compact and efficient little motor having only one coil which was as operative as the complicated and expensive alternating current prior art synchronous motors, where they had successive field poles with each pole having a different polarity.”

On the other hand, defendant contends that: “The prior art is replete with examples of motors operating upon precisely the same principle and having structures the same in all patentable particulars as O’Leary’s motor. The O’Leary claims in suit are invalid thereover.”

It was not until after a prolonged prosecution in the Patent Office that a decision was rendered by the Board of Appeals in favor of patentability. The Board stated: “While the structure and principle of operation of applicant’s machine after being disclosed appears obviously quite simple, it is our opinion that the extreme simplicity indicates invention over the relatively complex structures disclosed by the references. We believe invention is involved in this radical simplification of the device in view of the differences in structure involved in accomplishing it. Neither the structure nor the exact principle of operation of applicant’s device is anticipated by any of the citations and it is our opinion that invention is involved therein.”

Upon a full consideration of all the evidence, including the documents and other exhibits, as well as the oral testimony, and certain demonstrations made in court at the trial, as shown by the record, the [290]*290court is unable to agree with the conclusion of the Board of Appeals.

In this connection, however, it should be stated that two of the prior art patents here in evidence, to-wit, Holtz Patent No. 1,892,553, and Rowe Patent, 1,919,395, were not cited by the Patent Office. The applications • for these two patents were filed, respectively, approximately four and five and one-half years before O’Leary filed his application. Although they did not go to patent until after O’Leary filed, they are, nevertheless references against O’Leary. Alexander Milburn Company v. Davis-Bournonville Company, 270 U.S. 390, 46 S.Ct. 324, 70 L.Ed. 651.

As to Holtz Patent 1,892,553, plaintiffs submit that it is for “a motor of a very different type from those which we have been discussing;” that the Holtz motor “is a mixture of an induction and the reaction type of motor” and that “the O’Leary motor operates on a different principle from the Holtz motor, and the fact that Holtz went to the lengths that he did, and built the complicated arrangement that he shows, indicates that he did not grasp the possibilities of the extremely simple structure that O’Leary taught.”

Plaintiffs further submit that “the defendants say that Holtz teaches that if the squirrel-cage winding were removed, the motor would operate after a fashion. This is correct enough, but when Holtz stated this, he did not indicate that the shading rings should be removed from the stator poles.”

As to Rowe Patent No. 1,919,395, plaintiffs state (Br.P.41) it “is another example of what Holtz shows.”

It is the view of the court, however, that Holtz Patent No. 1,892,553 discloses every detail defined in the claims in suit. In addition it discloses a self-starting feature embodying a shading or starting coil on one salient of each field pole, as well as a squirrel-cage winding upon the rotor. The difference in structure recited in the claims in suit with respect to the disclosure of this Holtz Patent amounts merely to the omission by O’Leary of the self-starting feature, together with its function- — an omission which any mechanic skilled in the electrical art must have fully understood before O’Leary entered the field.

At the trial a motor was demonstrated which was precisely like the disclosure of Holtz Patent No. 1,892,553, and a modified motor was demonstrated which was precisely like the disclosure of the Holtz Patent, except that the shading coils were omitted from the field poles and the squirrel-cage winding was omitted from the rotor. It was demonstrated (Rec.P. 542) that the rotor of this modified motor had no residual magnetism.

The Holtz motor first mentioned operated perfectly as a self-starting synchronous motor.

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Related

O'LEARY v. Liggett Drug Co.
150 F.2d 656 (Sixth Circuit, 1945)

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Bluebook (online)
53 F. Supp. 288, 59 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 433, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1889, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oleary-v-liggett-drug-co-ohsd-1943.