Western Electric Co. v. Home Tel. Co.

85 F. 649, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2902
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern Alabama
DecidedFebruary 9, 1898
DocketNo. 202
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 85 F. 649 (Western Electric Co. v. Home Tel. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Western Electric Co. v. Home Tel. Co., 85 F. 649, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2902 (circtsdal 1898).

Opinion

TOULMIN, District Judge.

This is a suit in equity, brought by the Western Electric Company on letters patent of the United States No. 380.061, dated November 10, 1885, as the assignee of Charles E. Scribner, to, whom the patent was granted, against the Home Telephone Company, Albert S. Lyons, and Adam Glass. The patent is for improvements in multiple switch boards for use in telephone central offices or exchanges. The complainant is a corporation under the laws of the state of Illinois, and has been engaged in furnishing apparatus for telephone exchanges, it appears, for some years past. The defendant company is an Alabama corporation, and the individual defendants are Albert S. Lyons and Adam Glass, citizens of Alabama, and residents of Mobile, and, respectively, the president and treasurer of this company. The bill is of the usual form in patent infringement suits, and charges the defendants with infringing the patent stated above by reason of the .defendants’ use at their telephone exchange in the city of Mobile of certain apparatus called “multiple switch boards.” Originally it was charged that claims 2, 3, 4, and 6 of the Scribner patent were infringed. On the hearing claim 3 was withdrawn from such charge. This leaves before the court only claims 2, 4, and 6 of this Scribner patent, No. 330.061.

The nature and purpose of the invention embodied in this Scribner patent, and the patent itself, will need to be first stated, in order to have a clear understanding of the issues involved. The patentee says:

“My Invention relates to multiple switch-board signals, and is designed to enable the operators at the different boards to test, to determine, what lines are in use, while the circuits are so arranged that any two lines may be connected together upon any one of the boards, without including in then- circuit the re[651]*651sistance of the contact points of the switches. In all these systems heretofore used, the contact points of the switches have been included in the circuit of the two lines when connected together. My invention is designed to avoid the resistance of these contact points by the use of circuits and apparatus more simple than any heretofore devised, while the operators are enabled to make the usual tesis to determine whether any line wanted is already in use at another board. It is evident that this arrangement of circuits may be used with various kinds of switches other than tile spring jacks having insulated frames, as described, and as shown in Fig. 1. In Fig. 2, I have shown simple connecting bolts, e', d', e', for making the line connections; means being provided, as shown, for breaking the circuit, f', when a connection is made at either bolt. With circuits thus arranged, any two lines may be connected directly on either of the boards, without including the resistance of the contact points of the spring jacks in their circuit, while such signals and tests may be made as may be desired.”

Scribner, the patentee, testifying for complainant, states the object of his patent, and among other things says:

“The patent in suit, No. 330,061, is for a multiple switch board. The result sought to be accomplished by the invention of this patent is the connection between any two subscribers’ lines in a telephone exchange, the exclusion of contact points from the circuit of such conned Ions, while, at the same time, the indicator annunciators of such connected lines are temporarily cut off from their respective lines.”

In defining his invention, as embodied in this patent, by way of aiding in an understanding of it, Scribner further testified:

“The invention of the patent in suit provides a spring-jack switch upon each of the several switch boards for each line, the spring-jack switch being constructed to provide a contact piece to which the plug made contact when introduced into the spring jack, a spring normally resting upon a contact point and circuits with which the line is 1o be connected. By this construction the line wire is directly connected with a portion of each spring jack, this portion being that with which the plug is designed to make contact. The line wire is also connected with all the contact points, and all of its spring jacks, and thence through the indicating annunciator and battery and to ground return. The introduction of a plug into any spring jack gave a contact between the plug and that portion of the spring jack directly connected with the line wire, while at the same time the contact points of the jack in which the plug was inserted were open, and the circuit to the indicating annunciator interrupted, and this, too, no matter which spring jack of the line was employed. A plug, when inserted in the spring jack and having a conducting cord leading to another plug, would serve, upon the introduction of the second plug into a spring jack belonging to any line, to connect directly together the two lilies, without the contact points and any of the spring jacks being included in the connected circuit. This construction, with its results, is the principal feature of the patent in suit.”

Minnis, a witness for defendants, in Ms twenty-second answer says:

“Without going into any long dissertation upon the specifications and claims of the patent in suit, and their interwoven relations one to the other, I think that I can safely boil this down into one specific combination claim, to wit: A multiple telephone switch board, so arranged that talking circuits can be established thereon without including in said talking circuit any of the separable contacts of any of the jacks of either of Hie lines incorporated in said talking circuits, and without preventing or interfering with the operation of the usual apparatus commonly employed for the production of what is generally known and described as a ‘busy test,’ substantially as described.”

I do not perceive any substantial difference, if any difference at all, in the statement of the invention by these opposing witnesses. Lock[652]*652wood, an expert witness for complainant, in speaking of the separable contact springs,, and the defective operation resulting from the failure to cut them out of the talking circuit, as made when subscribers are to talk over the line (his reference being to the art as it existed prior to the advent of the Scribner patent), says:

“When such separable spring contacts are thus introduced into an electrical circuit, it is a fact that at each pair a certain resistance or opposition to the perfect passage of the electric current is introduced into the circuit; or,, in other words, when two portions of the circuit conductor are held in contact by pressure only, their resistance is greater than if, at such point of the circuit, the metallic conductor, such as a wire, had been undivided. In many forms of applications of electrical circuit, this additional resistance at each spring contact makes no appreciable difference to the passage of the current; but the electrical current employed in speaking telephony is very delicate and very weak, and requires that the resistance of the circuit shall be as low as possible, in order that its passage through the said circuit from one subscriber’s station to the other shall be facilitated.”

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Bluebook (online)
85 F. 649, 1898 U.S. App. LEXIS 2902, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/western-electric-co-v-home-tel-co-circtsdal-1898.