Process Engineers, Inc. v. Container Corp. of America

70 F.2d 487, 21 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 187, 1934 U.S. App. LEXIS 4197
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMarch 19, 1934
DocketNo. 5064
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 70 F.2d 487 (Process Engineers, Inc. v. Container Corp. of America) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Process Engineers, Inc. v. Container Corp. of America, 70 F.2d 487, 21 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 187, 1934 U.S. App. LEXIS 4197 (7th Cir. 1934).

Opinion

EVANS, Circuit Judge.

The art of making paper, to which this patent relates, is very old, and the various [488]*488inventions and discoveries which mark its advance need not be here detailed. It is sufficient to say that, generally speaking, paper is made of a composition of vegetable fibers matted together into sheets. The cellulose fibers are derived from a multitude of products, including cotton, straw, rope, linen rags, and various kinds of trees. To more adequately adapt the paper to its different uses, it is necessary to introduce non-fibrous material. The present patent covers a process which aims to overcome the absorptive nature of paper making fibers. In other words, in order to make the paper water and ink resistant, the manufacturer uses a process called sizing. It is to the paper sizing art that the patent in suit relates.

Claims 1 and 2, here involved, read as follows:

“1. A method of sizing paper, which consists in adding the size and alum to the paper stock after the fibers of said stock have passed through the Jordan.
“2. A method of sizing paper, which consists in adding a size solution to the paper stock after said stock has been treated by the Jordan.”

To understand the meaning of the words used in the claims, a brief description of the machines used in making paper is necessary.

We adopt appellant’s description of these machines.

“Before the cellulose fibers from which paper is made can be matted together into sheets it is necessary to break them down from the forms in which they are found and to separate them from each other. This is done in breaking or mixing machines called beaters. (The beater was invented in Holland in 1750, and is sometimes called a Hollander.) The beater consists of a large oval tub equipped with a roll of large diameter which is shod longitudinally with metal blades. This roll rotates at speeds ranging from 100 to 125 r.p.m. over a bed plate in which other blades are imbedded and can be adjusted in its position with respect to the blade.

“The beater is a batch mixer with a capacity from a half ton to a ton of fibers mixed with many times as much water. This mixture of fibers and water, called pulp, is circulated around the trough of the beater by blows from the beater roll, and during this operation the sizing, coloring and filling materials are mixed with the pulp. When suitably conditioned in the beater, sized apd colored, the pulp is diluted with approximately an equal quantity of water and is then drained into a large chest from which it is pumped to a refining engine or Jordan, which reduces the fibers to the desired length and fineness. The Jordan refiner is conical in shape with a tapered plug which revolves at a speed of 450 r.p.m. against the inner wall of the tapered shell. Both plug and shell are equipped with bars or knives which refine the pulp as it passes continuously through the Jordan.

“Prom the Jordan the refined pulp, which then has the desired characteristics for making it into a sheet of paper, flows into the machine chest where it undergoes further mixing, and from the machine chest the pulp is pumped to the paper machine, an enormous machine in which pulp is transformed into paper.

“At the wet end of the paper machine the pulp flows to a screen composed of fine slits to remove coarse physical impurities. In order to allow the pulp fibers to pass through this screen, the mixture is further diluted at this stage with a large volume of water.

“This diluted pulp, containing about one per cent solid matter, then flows on to a moving wire cloth belt or cylinder through which the water is drained, and which felts the fiber into a continuous web of paper. This web is carried over heated cylinder rolls which remove the remainder of the water in the sheet by evaporation. The web then passes through a series of heavy solid rolls which polish the paper. The finished paper is then reeled into rolls in which form it is taken from the paper machine.”

As this patent is restricted to the sizing of paper, which is accomplished by the introduction of sizing agents into the pulp, the issue before us becomes a narrow and simple one as soon as the terms and the old practices áre understood. The sizing ingredients are two, viz., rosin soap, called size, and sulphate of alumina, called alum. The action of these two chemicals on each other in the pulp mass results in the sizing. In view of the defense, it is unnecessary to describe in detail the chemical effect of one ingredient upon the other. The asserted novelty of both claims is limited to the time or place when the sizing ingredient is introduced. Claim 1 calls for the size and alum to be introduced “after the fibers have passed through the Jordan.” Claim 2 calls for the introduction of the size solution after the stock has been treated by the Jordan.

The validity of the two claims is attacked on the ground that the introduction of the chemical ingredients after the stock has [489]*489passed through the Jordan was old and therefore was not taught by the patentee, De Cew. It is likewise contended that the prior art, evidenced by patents, was such as to prevent appellant from successfully asserting that the advance of the patent was invention. Appellee also denied infringement.

The court found, among other things:

“The general practice is and has been for a long time prior to the patent in suit, to apply the alum and sizing solutions at the beater engine.
“However, for a long time prior to the patent in suit, it had been known
“(a) to apply the size and alum solutions after the operations of all the reducing engines and at or prior to the paper making machine ‘with the water with which the pulp is diluted previous to or when supplied to the paper making machine’;
“(b) to apply the size and alum solutions after the reducing engine, as (at) the beater engine, and water has been added in a separate chest, wherein the two sizing elements are thoroughly mixed with the ‘furnish’ by means of lightly operating frictionless mixing devices;
“(c) to apply the size and alum solution as it passes into the Jordan engine;
“(d) to apply the size and alum solution into the discharge end of the Jordan engine and after the reducing action of said engine is practically completed; and
“(e) to apply the size solution to the ‘furnish’ in advance of the Jordan engine and to apply the alum solution to the ‘furnish’ after the Jordan engine and in immediate advance of the paper making machine.
“In substance, every point in the order of application of size and alum solutions to the furnish in its path from the refining engines or engine to the paper machine, whether or not a beater engine and Jordan engine, either or both in the usual succession, were used, had been known and described or used long prior to the patent in suit. s' ® *
“The order or point of application of the size and alum to the furnish, at or near the paper machine,- after the final reduction of the fibres by any and all of the refining or reducing engines employed and where the furnish was diluted previous to or when supplied to the paper machine, as charged to be used by the defendant, was old long prior to the patent in suit. * *

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70 F.2d 487, 21 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 187, 1934 U.S. App. LEXIS 4197, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/process-engineers-inc-v-container-corp-of-america-ca7-1934.