United States Movidyn Corp. v. Hercules Inc.

388 F. Supp. 1146, 185 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 116, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14298
CourtDistrict Court, D. Minnesota
DecidedJanuary 17, 1975
DocketCiv. A. 4-71 Civ. 132
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 388 F. Supp. 1146 (United States Movidyn Corp. v. Hercules Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States Movidyn Corp. v. Hercules Inc., 388 F. Supp. 1146, 185 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 116, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14298 (mnd 1975).

Opinion

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

RUSSELL E. SMITH, Chief Judge.

The pleadings in this case put in issue the validity and infringement of United States Patent 3,408,306 (herein Boylan II). 1 Plaintiff United States Movidyn Corp. (hereafter Movidyn) seeks a declaration of invalidity. Defendant Hercules Incorporated (hereafter Hercules) by cross-pleading seeks an adjudication of validity and a finding of infringement. The case was bifurcated and the antitrust and accounting issues were to await a determination of the issues of validity. The parties, having been advised of the nature of the court’s findings and conclusions as to the enforceability of the patent, now agree that the antitrust issue should be decided.

*1148 PATENTABILITY — Fact

I find the facts :

In a great many manufacturing processes foaming creates problems and over the course of the years a wide variety of liquids and solids have been used to control it 2 The wood pulp industry has been plagued with foaming. In the course of making wood pulp, wood chips are cooked in a caustic solution to separate the cellulose fibers from the organic connective material. The product of this cooking is brown stock, and it is necessary to wash the brown stock to separate the cellulose fibers from the spent chemicals and the dissolved organic connective material. The washing is done in a brown stock washer in which the highly alkaline brown stock is agitated at temperatures approaching 100 °C. The natural soaps in the brown stock, when agitated, create foam. The foam inhibits the washing and, unless destroyed, creates a bottleneck in the manufacturing process with the result a serious reduction in pulp production. The alkalinity and temperature of the mix in the brown stock washers complicate the defoaming problem. The pulp industry and the suppliers to the industry were aware of the problem and of the need for improved defoaming methods and compositions for use in brown stock washers, but as of the 1950’s defoaming the brown stock washers was a problem not satisfactorily solved by existing defoamers.

In 1953 Hercules, then a supplier of chemicals to the pulp industry, assigned Dr. Francis J. Boylan, a physical chemist employed in its large and expensive research center, to work on the development of a defoamer for brown stock washers. Boylan reviewed the literature relating to defoamers and found as others had 3 that very little was known about the “fundamentals of their mode of action.” Many defoamers were on the market. Most of them depended on oils and waxes — the fatty acids, the fatty esters, the vegetable and mineral oils, and in later years the organopolysiloxane 4 oils and compositions. It had been thought that foam inhibition, whether resulting from bubble coalescence or bubble rupture, was the result of differential surface tensions rendering the bubble film unstable. 5 Boylan’s microscopic examination of defoamers led him to believe that the most efficient defoamers contained colloidal plate-like solid crystals which caused a pitting of the bubble film. He determined that the crystals functioned when one or more of them simultaneously came in contact with the two surfaces of the bubble film creating a weak spot which would readily rupture. The crystal was effective only if it had a relatively high contact angle. 6 The degree of the hydrophobicity of the crystal determines the height of the contact angle. 7

It was experimentally determined that a small particle was within some limits more efficient than a larger one and that only the surface characteristics of the particle were important. From all of this Boylan concluded that relatively cheap and normally hydrophilic colloidal silicas (silicon dioxide) could be used if their surfaces could be made hydrophobic. Boylan experimented with various particles, oils, and surfactants, and also *1149 with various methods of rendering silica particles hydrophobic by the use of organopolysiloxanes. By late 1958 he had largely completed the work which later appeared in the Patents Boylan I and Boylan II.

The Boylan composition was grossly described as “comprising from about 80% to about 97% of certain water-insoluble hydrophobic organic liquids, from about 3% to about 20% of small, solid, normally hydrophilic particles having a hydrophobic surface suspended in the organic liquid and from about 0.5% to about 5 % of a surfactant.” 8 The method of treating silicas with organopolysiloxane oils to render their surfaces hydrophobic was not new and the dispersion of the antifoam ingredient in organic oil was not new.

Boylan did discover, and this was the heart of his discovery, and it was new, that the solid colloidal particle with a hydrophobic surface was an effective defoaming tool. The organopolysiloxanes were used, not as defoaming agents in themselves, but to render the silica particles hydrophobic. The fact is, and it was demonstrated in court, that hydrophobic surfaces do puncture bubbles. Particles with hydrophilic surfaces may contribute to defoaming by altering surface tension as suggested by Zimmer (United States Patents 2,379,268 and 2,467,177) but they are not effective in the same manner as those with hydrophobic surfaces.

Prior to Boylan the literature did not consider the hydrophobicity of the particle as a defoaming factor. 9 Patents issued prior to Boylan did teach the use of particles in combination with organopolysiloxanes to control foaming. Some of the particles used were hydrophobic, but the patents did not articulate the use of hydrophobic particles, and in all of them the organopolysiloxane oils or compounds were regarded as the effective defoaming agent. The polysiloxanes were not described as being used to render the particles hydrophobic.

Thus Currie (British Patent 639,673, United States Patent 2,632,736) combined a silica aerogel with a viscous methyl siloxane polymer and produced a semi-rubbery polymer which could be dispersed in an organic liquid. Currie used the silica to modify the methyl siloxane and regarded the polymer resulting as the defoaming agent. He did note that the excess silica could be removed by filtration and that the extract thus obtained possessed the defoaming property of the siloxane aerogel grease. The extract thus obtained was composed of hydrophobic silica particles, but Currie did not say so and he did not consider them to be the defoaming agent. The ratio of silica to the silicone employed was about 1 to 5.

Solomon (United States Patent 2,829,112) followed Currie and produced an emulsion employing a mixture of organopolysiloxanes and colloidal silica. His examples indicated a ratio of silica to silicone of 1 to 20. Sullivan (United States Patent 2,894,913), also following Currie, described Currie’s use of silica as a filler and stated a preferred range of silica to silicone ratios of 3 to 100 to 7 to 100.

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388 F. Supp. 1146, 185 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 116, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14298, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-movidyn-corp-v-hercules-inc-mnd-1975.