Home/Third Circuit/Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Cutter Electric & Mfg. Co.

Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Cutter Electric & Mfg. Co.

169 F. 634, 95 C.C.A. 162, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 4627
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedApril 12, 1909
DocketNo. 55
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 169 F. 634 (Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Cutter Electric & Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Cutter Electric & Mfg. Co., 169 F. 634, 95 C.C.A. 162, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 4627 (3d Cir. 1909).

Opinion

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.

In the court below, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, owner of patent No. 633,-772, granted September 26, 1899, to Wright and Aalborg, for an automatic circuit breaker, filed a bill against the Cutter Electric & Manufacturing Company charging infringement of the second and fifth claims thereof. The court below, on an application for a preliminiary injunction (149 Fed. 437), refused such injunction and subsequently on final hearing dismissed ’the bill, whereupon the complainant appealed [635]*635to this court from such decree. The claims here in question were held valid by this court in an opinion reported at 143 Fed. 966, 75 C. C. A. 152, and by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in an opinion reported in Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Condit Electric Co., 167 Fed. 546, subsequent to the argument of the present case.

In carrying heavy electric currents for lighting and power, it is necessary to use switches for opening and closing circuits. These are protected against the abnormal currents caused by lighting or overloading by automatic circuit breakers. The main contacts of the circuit breakers are copper, which is highly conductive and relatively expensive. Their surfaces must be kept smooth and unpitted, otherwise dangerous and destructive arcs will form. Moreover, when an electric circuit is opened or interrupted, an arc forms ■ between the contact surfaces owing to the current continuing for an instant between unconnected contacts, and if the current is large the damage both to the contacts and the surrounding apparatus may be great. To obviate that difficulty a supplementary or shunt current having carbon contacts is resorted to around terminals. These carbons are cheaper, and, being refractory, are less liable to injury from the arc. Such shunt contacts are arranged to open after and close before the main contacts, so that when the circuit is opened the current flows last through the shunt terminals, and the first contact is also between such carbon terminals when it is closed. These general principles were present in various constructions.prior to the patent in question. The patentees, however, embodied the principle in a device which not only made these successive contacts by a novel form of connecting apparatus, but they so vertically aligned the parts of the apparatus as to produce a new type of long, narrow circuit breaker styled “Edgewise.” This edgewise type developed several important advantages. To combine safety with great carrying capacity and yet secure economy of space, it is important that the apparatus should not be spread laterally, but that the different parts of a circuit breaker should be so located with reference to each other, and the circuit breaker itself to other circuit breakers, that currents should not stray to other instruments or parts of the same instrument, and arcs should be minimized and instantly extinguished without contact with other apparatus. These requirements were met by the patentees’ device. The breaker is long, narrow, and all parts vertically aligned. It opens outwardly from the switchboard, and carries all working parts away from adjoining instruments. The arm is hinged at the bottom, and the shunt contacts, being above the copper ones, pass over longer arcs. These main contacts are laminated, being composed of a number of springy, metallic, bevel-edged plates. When forced against the flat surface of the main stationary contact, they make a maximum metallic conductive surface and utilize the entire conductive cross-section. The whole mechanism is adapted to ease and rapidity in closing. These and other advantages led this court in the opinion cited to hold that the invention “was a distinct advance upon the prior art, producing new and valuable results.”

[636]*636In the present suit the respondent has adduced testiniesiy, not before the court in the prior one, in the patent of Herrick No. 504,528, two English patents and a prior use. In view of the fact that it is conceded that all the elements of the patent in suit are old, these several citations, which simply show that some of the elements of the patent in suit were old, but do not show all of the elements of the claims in combination, do not avail to defeat the patent. Together with the testimony relating to type B of complainant’s device, they have been considered, but we see no reason to depart from the court’s former holding that the patent is valid.

This leaves us to consider the question of infringement which is predicated on Exhibits 3 and 4, illustrated in the accompanying cuts t

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Related

Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Roller-Smith Co.
212 F. 946 (Second Circuit, 1914)

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Bluebook (online)
169 F. 634, 95 C.C.A. 162, 1909 U.S. App. LEXIS 4627, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/westinghouse-electric-mfg-co-v-cutter-electric-mfg-co-ca3-1909.