Photon, Inc. v. Harris-Intertype Corp.

235 F. Supp. 921, 143 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 397, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8351
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedNovember 30, 1964
DocketCiv. A. Nos. 60-219, 60-412
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 235 F. Supp. 921 (Photon, Inc. v. Harris-Intertype Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Photon, Inc. v. Harris-Intertype Corp., 235 F. Supp. 921, 143 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 397, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8351 (D. Mass. 1964).

Opinion

CAFFREY, District Judge.

Civil Action 60-412 is a suit for patent infringement commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Harris-Inter-type Corporation (Harris) against Photon, Inc. The complaint is based on two patents issued to one Cecil L. Tansel, No. 2,725,803 issued December 6, 1955 (hereinafter referred to as Tansel ’8Q3) [922]*922and No. 2,896,523 issued July 28, 1959 (hereinafter referred to as Tansel ’523).

After the commencement of the suit in New York, Photon filed in this court Civil Action 60-219 for a declaratory judgment against Harris. The second case involved substantially the same issues as those in litigation in the New York case, plus a claim for declaratory judgment with reference to Harrold and Pritchard patent No. 2,-|75,497, which claim was dismissed on motion by another Judge of this Court, leaving the two cases, for all practical purposes, with identical issues. The motion by Photon to transfer the New York case to this District for trial was allowed and the cases were consolidated for trial and tried together. The parties tried the consolidated cases on the theory that Harris was to be considered the plaintiff suing Photon for infringement-of the two above-named Tansel patents and that Photon was to be considered the defendant who had counterclaimed for a declaration of invalidity anc. non-infringement.

Harris is a Delaware corporation and is now the owner of the Tansel patents. Photon, successor to Lithomat, Inc., is a Massachusetts corporation with a usual place of business at Wilmington, Massachusetts.

At the time of trial, Harris had developed photocomposing machine prototypes which were then undergoing field testing at commercial printing establishments. No evidence has been offered of the sale of any Harris machine made under the Tansel patents. For some years Photon has manufactured and sold photocomposing machines. Its latest models are designated by it as Series 200 and Series 500. These machines are based on United States applications and patents filed or obtained by Rene Higonnet and Louis F. Moyroud.

Application SN 56,880, on the basis of which Tansel patent ’523 was issued, became the subject of interference No. 84,685 in the United States Patent Office, together with Higonnet et al application SN 610,336. The interference culminated in an award by the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals of the invention to Tansel. (See Tansel v. Higonnet, et al, 215 F.2d 457, 42 CCPA 732.) Interference counts presented on behalf of Higonnet et al were intended to cover and afford patent protection for the' Photon development. These claims were drafted and presented to the Patent Office on behalf of Higonnet by the attorney who now represents Photon in the instant cases. These claims now appear as Claims 8 and 9 in Tansel patent ’523 by i-eason of the decision of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals awarding those two claims to Tansel.

Extensive pretrial discovery took place in these cases and both parties filed several hundred pages of briefs both before and after the two-week trial. The case was orally argued by experienced patent counsel. In the course of the trial an early model of the Tansel machine was introduced into evidence and a motion picture of it in operation was shown. An early model of the Higonnet machine was also introduced in evidence. Various experiments were conducted by experts both in the courtroom and in a room at the Parker House in which display equipment had been assembled. Specimens of the work done by various, machines were accepted in evidence and a view was taken of the latest Photon machine at the Photon factory in Wilmington, Massachusetts.

In addition, the parties offered in evidence a mass of documentary material including authenticated copies of all patents allegedly constituting prior art. At the outset of the trial counsel for Harris expressed the opinion that the prime issue in these consolidated cases is validity of the Tansel patents and counsel for Photon concurred in this opinion. Harris concedes that the decision of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals in the interference which awarded Claims 8 and 9 of patent ’523 to Tansel is not res judicata in this proceeding. Harris urges, however, that Photon must sustain a heavy burden herein to overcome the presumption of validity created [923]*923"by the decision in favor of Tansel in the interference and from the fact that the patents were issued.

I find as follows:

The subject matter of the Tansel patents is an electrically operated machine for photocomposition. Photocomposition is the projection of characters from a matrix by optical means to a photosensitive film or paper. Conventional means are then employed to make from this film .a printing plate whereby printing processes may be performed without the use of lead type in any stage of the printing ■procedure. Photocomposing machines eliminate the necessity for the use of brass matrices or molds from which type is cast. They also eliminate handling and circulating of such matrices in a typesetter and the casting of slugs in hot-type metals in such matrices and the assembling of slugs i.'to a frame or chase, as well as making a proof therefrom and the photographing of it.

The Tansel patents describe the use of flash photography (also called in the trade strobe flash) for projecting the characters on to the film or paper while a character carrier in the form of a drum is rotating.

The first issue that must be resolved is whether or not the Tansel pat•ents are invalid for lack of invention, on the familiar principle that a combination which only unites old elements, with no change in their respective functions, and which fails to produce some new result or some novel use, does not contain invention and is, for that reason, not patentable. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 71 S.Ct. 127, 95 L.Ed. 162 (1950). The elements included in the Tansel patents for a photo-composing machine are: a keyboard, a register, a system for justification, a variable width device, a rotating character carrier, and a flash illumination. Defendant contends that all of these elements are now and were old at the time of Tansel’s alleged invention, and that the patents in suit call for nothing more than a combination of these old elements with no change in their respective functions.

Harris contends that the Tansel concept does amount to invention, saying in its reply brief after trial, “Basically, our position is that the prior art either did not recognize the problem or offered no practical solution to it,” citing S. D. Warren Co. v. Nashua Gummed & Coated Paper Co., 205 F.2d 602 (1 Cir. 1953), and Diamond Rubber Co. of New York v. Consolidated Rubber Tire Co., 220 U.S. 428, 31 S.Ct. 444, 55 L.Ed. 527. Harris argues in the same brief (p. 22):

“The concept of the combination and the means for accomplishing the improved result was what was novel, and the fact that a flash circuit was old in other arts is wholly immaterial.”

Harris also urges in its reply brief (p. 31):

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Bluebook (online)
235 F. Supp. 921, 143 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 397, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8351, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/photon-inc-v-harris-intertype-corp-mad-1964.