Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. v. Cleveland Vapor Light Co.

150 F. 583, 1907 U.S. App. LEXIS 4940
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island
DecidedFebruary 9, 1907
DocketNo. 2,677
StatusPublished

This text of 150 F. 583 (Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. v. Cleveland Vapor Light Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. v. Cleveland Vapor Light Co., 150 F. 583, 1907 U.S. App. LEXIS 4940 (circtdri 1907).

Opinion

BROWN, District Judge.

This suit is for infringement of letters patent No. 447,757, granted March 10, 1891, on an application filed March 5, 1889, to Harry C. Campbell, for an improvement in incandescent burners and method of using the same. The opinion of this court denying a petition for a preliminary injunction may be found in 14-0 Fed. 348.

The principal defenses are that the patent is void for want of invention, and that both the British specification of Cooper, No. 420, of 1883, and the British patent to Siemang, No. 8097, of 1886, exhibit -a substantial representation of the patented invention in such full, clear, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, without the necessity of making any experiments, to practice the invention. . :

The claims are as follows:

“(1) The method of employing hydrocarbon fluids for illuminating purposes herein described — that is to say, vaporizing the hydrocarbon liquid by hea.% and causing the heated vapor to pass in a fine stream under considerable pressure through an air-mixing chamber, and igniting the heated mixturé of hydro1 carbon fluid and air in presence of a refractory substance capable of in1 candescence, substantially as described.
“(2) The combination, in one device, as a portable incandescent lamp, of a Bunsen burner, an. incandescent filamentary substance, and a self-generating and heating-gas attachment, substantially as described.”

The complainant’s argument is based upon claim 2, which describes the elements of Campbell’s combination, “an incandescent filamentary substance” (by which he means a Welsbach mantle), a Bunsen burner, and a self-generating and heating-gas attachment. The self-general ing and lieating-gas attachment constitutes the only novelty in apparatus. Campbell admits that the whole device above the jet- orifice of the gas apparatus was procured from the Welsbach Company.'! ; :.

[584]*584The Welsbach incandescent mantle has been recognized as a most important invention, and our primary inquiry is whether the Campbell patent shows any invention other than that of Welsbach.

It is well, known that, in producing light by the Welsbach apparatus, illuminating gas is used, not to produce light by its combustion, but to produce a blue flame of high temperature, which heats the mantle to incandescence, thus furnishing light. The substance of the Welsbach invention was the production of a mantle that could be heated to incandescence. The means for supplying the necessary heat were at hand in the well-known Bunsen burner. A Bunsen burner, as well as the incandescent mantle, was comprised in the Welsbach apparatus.

It has been very clearly shown by this defendant that it was well known that a Bunsen burner .could be supplied either with ordinary illuminating gas or with gasoline vapor generated from a portable device. The combination of a portable gasoline vapor-producing device and a Bunsen burner was well known. Thus, in patent No. 219,737, of 1879, to Kellog, is shown a portable gasoline-fed Bunsen burner which is described by complainant’s expert as “a rather well-arranged device for burning hydrocarbon vapor and to produce the Bunsen flame.” At the hearing, a Welsbach mantle was heated to incandescence by a lamp of this kind.

As was noted in the previous decision, in a former suit upon this patent by this complainant against Best ([C. C.] 137 Fed. 940), it was contended that none of the devices of the prior art was capable of heating the Welsbach mantle to incandescence. Such a contention is out of the question in this case. The defendant has demonstrated the existence of many gasoline-fed Bunsen burners prior to Campbell’s invention.

The complainant first contends that, though the Welsbach mantle was old, and though a gasolipe-fed Bunsen burner was old, Campbell’s conception that they could be combined so as to produce a portable incandescent lamp was an inventive conception. If so, it must be because it was something not fairly comprehended in the scope of Welsbach’s important invention.' It seems-a fair test of whether there is anything in Campbell’s combination, which was not already in substance in the Welsbach invention, to inquire whether the inventor of the Welsbach mantle could have been precluded from using it upon a Bunsen burner fed with gasoline vapor from a portable generator, after he had already demonstrated that it could be heated to incandescence on a Bunsen burner using ordinary illuminating gas. If Campbell’s thought of supplying the Welsbach apparatus, comprising mantle and Bunsen burner, with gasoline vapor from a portable generator, arose to the height of an invention, it follows that the inventor of the Wels-bach mantle could not have used what would seem to be an equivalent means of heating.

Can there be a fair doubt that, upon a contest between the inventor of the Welsbach mantle and Campbell, it would have been held that any known type of heater commonly used for producing high temperatures was merely an equivalent for the heater used by Welsbach? Assuming, that the Bunsen burner used by Welsbach to heat his mantle [585]*585to incandescence was fed with illuminating gas, can it be claimed that, he would have made a new invention, an additional invention, by putting his mantle over an existing type of Bunsen burner fed with gasoline vapor from a portable generator ?

It is said that Campbell, by selecting a portable heater fed by gasoline vapor, accomplished something more than simply heating the Welsbach mantle; that by using a vapor generator of small size he was not limited to the proximity of a gas plant, but could make the Welsbach mantle give forth its light in isolated districts where there was no gas plant; and that the perception that this could be done was invention. It is very clear, however, that the Welsbach mantle was an invention not in its nature restricted to use in the proximity of a gas plant or in thickly populated districts. Welsbach was not tied down to any particular source from which he might derive the fuel to be fed to his Bunsen burner; and the gas works from which Welsbach may possibly have derived his gas was, of course, no part of his combination. The apparatus and mantle of Welsbach have always been portable. They can be used equally well on individual gas plants in remote localities, and at any place where proper fuel can be procured to produce the blue flame of a Bunsen burner. The advantages of a portable gas generator over a city gas plant are familiar. Portability is a mere question of weight and size of the vapor generator.

There is nothing in Campbell’s specification which points out that he claimed to have made an invention by using a portable, as distinguished from a stationary, gas plant, to feed a Bunsen burner; and this contention as to portability has its only foundation in the words of the second claim, “the combination, in one device, as a portable incandescent lamp.” There is no evidence to show that there was any ad-r vantage in the portability of a gasoline generator, the Bunsen burner, and the incandescent mantle when combined as a unitary structure. It is not shown that the assemblage of these three elements in a unitary structure for the purpose of transportation is a matter of any consequence.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. v. Best
137 F. 940 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern New York, 1905)
Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co. v. Cleveland Vapor Light Co.
140 F. 348 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island, 1905)
Jones v. Clow
39 F. 785 (U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illnois, 1889)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
150 F. 583, 1907 U.S. App. LEXIS 4940, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pennsylvania-globe-gaslight-co-v-cleveland-vapor-light-co-circtdri-1907.