Otto Coking Co. v. Koppers Co.

Third Circuit

Otto Coking Co. v. Koppers Co.

258 F. 122, 169 C.C.A. 208, 1919 U.S. App. LEXIS 1169

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit

DecidedMay 22, 1919

DocketNo. 2435

StatusPublished

Cited by6 cases

This text of 258 F. 122 (Otto Coking Co. v. Koppers Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

Otto Coking Co. v. Koppers Co., 258 F. 122, 169 C.C.A. 208, 1919 U.S. App. LEXIS 1169 (3d Cir. 1919).

Pincite

Opinion

WOOLLEY, Circuit Judge.

This appeal is from a decree of the District Court holding valid and infringed claims 1 and 5 of the complainant’s Letters Patent, No. 818,033, issued April 17, 1906, to Heinrich Koppers, for improvements in by-product coke-ovens, and dismissing a counterclaim of infringement of defendant’s Letters Patent, No. 673,928, issued to Schniewind.

The defenses pleaded respectively to the claim and counterclaim of infringement are: (1) Non-infringement; and (2) invalidity of the patent claims in suit, both for anticipation and lack of patentable invention.

Though the decision in this case will affect interests of considerable magnitude, the accompanying opinion probably will be read only by those who are engaged in the by-product coke-oven art and in kindred arts. As discussion in this opinion will be addressed to those who are conversant with the very extensive and complex subject matter of the patents in suit, we shall review the art, prior and present, in no greater detail than we deem necessary to make known the grounds of our decision.

The subject matter of the Koppers patent is by-product coke-ovens and the invention of the patent relates to improved means for heating them. The art of by-product coke-ovens was highly developed at the time of Koppers’ invention. It was in itself a broad art. Because of its dose relation, industrially and economically, to the great metallurgical arts, it had for many years attracted capital in ample measure and had invited the attention of scientists of the first order throughout the world. Notwithstanding the great advance which the art had [124]*124made, the state of the art — that is, the point which the art had reached and at which it had stopped when Koppers made the invention of the patent in suit — disclosed a problem which was present at its beginning, which had persisted throughout its development, and which remained in a large measure unsolved. This was the problem of applying heat to the walls of a coking-chamber with an uniformity of temperature that would insure uniformity in the coking-operation and in the resultant products. Uniformity of heat distribution to coals in process of coking is essential to the production of coke of the structure and composition required for use in metallurgical industries as distinguished from coke suited only for general or domestic uses. Uniformity of heat distribution is essential also' to the saving of those distilled by-products — such as benzol and toluol — that are peculiarly subject to destruction during distillation.

Koppers freely availed himself of the art and cleverly combined in his oven many features of merit which are not embraced in his invention. Therefore,' in order correctly to estimate the issues of this case and properly to confine their decision to Koppers’ invention, it will be necessary to distinguish in Koppers’ oven the things which he invented from the things which already existed. This will require a short excursion into the prior art.

Coke is the mass of carbon which is left after the volatile matter of coal has been driven off by heat applied in such a manner as not to burn the carbon. Coking coals are converted into coke in the industrial arts in two principal ways, the gas-retort method and the coke-oven method.

The gas-retort method produces illuminating gas as a main product and yields as a by-product a soft, spongy and fragmentary coke known as “domestic coke.” The coke-oven method produces a hard, strong and structurally coherent coke known as “metallurgical coke” because of its utility in foundry and blast furnace processes. In the production of .coke of the latter grade, the gases of coal distillation may be altogether consumed as in the wasteful bee-hive coke-ovens, or they may be saved as highly valuable by-products as in by-product coke-ovens. The difference in coke products reflects the difference in methods of producing them and in the problems incident to their production. It is with by-product coke-ovens operated primarily to produce metallurgical coke, and secondarily, gaseous by-products, that we are concerned in this case.

The by-product coke-oven typical of the prior art, though appearing on its outside to be one huge, homogeneous structure, contained within itself two distinct organizations. One had to do with combustion and the other with supplying materials for combustion. These organizations, while inseparably related in their operation, occupied separate parts of the structure and were commonly referred to by reason of their location as the “upper story” and the “lower story” of the oven.

A by-product coke-oven of the prior art, while generally spoken of in the singular, comprised actually a plurality of ovens or coking-chambers, the size of the oven as a whole being determined by the number [125]*125of coking-chambers desired. The upper story of the oven was made up of a battery of any number of long, high and narrow coking-chambers extending from side to side of the oven. Intermediate the coking-chambers and parallel with them was a like number of heating-chambers of somewhat similar dimensions. In this alternate arrangement of coking-chambers and heating-chambers, a wall of a heating-chamber was similarly a wall of its adjacent coking-cliamber, and so on throughout the battery. Heat was conveyed from a heating-chamber, in which combustion occurred, through the wall dividing it from a coking-chamber to the coking-coals there undergoing distillation.

To facilitate uniformity of heat distribution to its walls, the heating-chamber was divided into many parts by narrow vertical flues extending from near the bottom of the chamber to a channel or flue running horizontally across its top. Nearly midway the heating-chamber, a partition, extending from the bottom upward to this horizontal flue, divided the chamber into two parts. These batteries of coking-cham-' bers and beating-chambers, and certain hot air delivery flues presently to be mentioned, together with the supporting and separating masonry-all made of highly refractory and heat resisting bricks — comprised the combustion organization of the oven located in the upper story.

The lower story of the oven was largely made up of pillars and walls, likewise of refractory brick, to support the upper story. In the center of the lower story, or at its sides, or, indeed, on its Outside, was placed one or more sets of regenerators. A “set” of regenerators comprised two regenerators. Between the regenerators and the sides of the oven, when the regenerators were placed in the center, or between the regenerators and the center of the oven, when the re-generators were placed at the sides, was a system of cooling-flues and open arches used to prevent melting or fluxing of the bottom masonry of the upper story, incident to the sub-bottom combustion system employed.

A regenerator, described very generally, is an oven-like structure of firebrick which contains at the bottom an air flue or sole-channel and checkerwork of firebrick upward from the sole-channel nearly to the dome. The functions of a regenerator are, primarily, to heat air, and secondarily, to so heat it that it attains an approach to uniformity of temperature before it is delivered to the heating-chambers of the second story, where it is used with gas as combustion material. Re-generators of the prior art — in coke-ovens as distinguished from gas generators — were placed longitudinal of the battery of heating-chambers, that is, at right angles to each heating-chamber and to each coking-chamber throughout the length or depth of the battery.

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