Westinghouse v. Boyden Power-Brake Co.

66 F. 997, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 3361
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Maryland
DecidedMarch 11, 1895
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 66 F. 997 (Westinghouse v. Boyden Power-Brake Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Westinghouse v. Boyden Power-Brake Co., 66 F. 997, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 3361 (circtdmd 1895).

Opinion

MORRIS, District Judge.

This is a bill in equity, in usual form, charging the defendant with infringing the Westinghouse patent No. 360,070, dated March 29, 1887, for a fluid-pressure automatic brake mechanism. The claims alleged to have been infringed by the defendant are claims 1, 2, and 4, which are as follows:

“(1) In a brake mechanism, the combination of a main air pipe, an auxiliary reservoir, a brake cylinder, a triple valve, and an auxiliary valve device, actuated by the piston of the triple valve and independent of the main valve thereof, for admitting air in the application of the brake directly from the main air pipe to the brake cylinder, substantially as set forth. (2) In a brake mechanism, the combination of a main air pipe, an auxiliary reservoir, a brake cylinder, and a triple valve, having a piston whose preliminary , traverse [998]*998admits air from the auxiliary reservoir to the brake cylinder, and which by a further traverse admits air directly from the main air pipe to the brake cylinder, substantially as set forth.” “(4) The combination, in a triple-valve device, of a case or chest, a piston fixed upon a stem and working in a chamber therein, a valve moving with the piston stem, and governing ports and passages in the case leading to connections with an auxiliary reservoir and a brake cylinder and to the atmosphere, respectively, and an auxiliary valve actuated by the piston stem and controlling communication between passages leading to connections with a main air pipe and with the brake cylinder, respectively, substantially as set forth.”

The only defense now urged by the defendant is non-infringement.

The history of the pioneer inventions of George Westinghouse, Jr., in fluid-pressure brakes, by means of which the brakes of a train of railroad cars can be operated by air pressure controlled by the engineer of the train, and the history of the successive steps and inventions by which he has devised mechanisms adapted to apply that power so as to act automatically on each car, and the scope and fundamental importance of his later inventions, by which he has accelerated in an astonishing degree the quickness with which the brakes can be applied almost simultaneously on each car of a long train, consisting of as many as 60 freight cars, has been carefully and fully stated by Judge Townsend, who delivered the opinion in the case of Westinghouse v. Air-Brake Co., 59 Fed. 581; and by Judge Shipman in the same case on appeal (11 C. C. A. 528, 63 Fed. 962); and in the opinion of Judge Lacombe, filed December 27, 1894, in a case between the same parties in the United States circuit court for the Southern district of New York (65 Fed. 99).

The patent now in. suit, No. 360,070, March 29, 1887, is the first of the Westinghouse patents in which he describes an additional function ingrafted upon his automatic air brake, which is to be used only in cases of unusual emergency, and which is intended to meet the difficulties of applying air brakes quickly on long trains. The purpose of the device was to increase the quickness of the serial action of the-automatic brake mechanism on each successive car by making the triple-valve device of each brake mechanism set in operation the valves on the car immediately in its rear, and at the same time to make use of the train-pipe air vented for this purpose from the train pipe at each triple valve, so as to add its power to the power supplied from the auxiliary reservoir of each car. The result which Westinghouse was seeking in the new device described in patent Wo. 360,070 was, first and principally, to vent the train pipe at each car so as to quicken the serial action of the brakes from car to car; and, secondarily, to utilize the vented air, and not waste its power. Westinghouse discovered that he could accomplish this result by so constructing the ordinary triple valve of his automatic mechanism that, in an emergency, the engineer, by widely opening his engineer’s valve and thereby causing a sudden and unusual release of pressure in the train pipe, could cause the piston of the triple valve to make an unusual and further traverse, and thereby actuate a valve which opened a port by which the train-pipe air was admitted suddenly and directly into the brake cylinder, without passing through the auxiliary reservoir.' This sudden release of air [999]*999from the train pipe ven led that pipe at the first car, and that, venting in like manner, released the pressure in the train pipe at the valve of the next car, and so on, from car to car, with almost, instantaneous rapidity. Tt. is shown that this device, as first constructed, was not entirely successful.- It applied the brakes with greatly increased serial rapidity as compared with any former device, and with much greater power, but not so quickly but that the rear cars impinged against the forward ones with destructive shocks. The reason for this- appears to have been that the operation of venting was not carried' far enough, because the port opened by the auxiliary valve was not of sufficient size, and did not release the full volume of train-pipe air suddenly enough to vent it sufficiently.1 This defect was remedied by an improved mechanism devised by Westinghouse, and described in his patent No. 376,887, January 24, 1888. The success of this improved device has demonstrated that the invention by which the further traverse of the triple-valve piston beyond the extent of the traverse required for the ordinary application of the brakes is made to admit a large volume of train-pipe air directly to the brake cylinder was one of great importance. The proofs show that a quick-action automatic brake, which would give the results which this brake has accomplished, was earnestly sought after by inventors and car builders, and all had failed, until Westinghouse discovered that it could be done by this mode of operation. In the cases above referred to, in which this patent No. 360,070, and the improvement on it, No. 376,837, were discussed with reference to the state of the art and the scope of the invention therein disclosed, these were held to be patents of a fundamental pioneer class, describing an invention of primary importance. In those cases the defendants, who were charged with infringing, were using a separate and independent valve to open the port to the train pipe, and the question was whether or not Westinghouse was restricted to the form of independent valve and the precise mode of actuating it set out in his patent. It was held that he was entitled to a liberal construction of his claims, and that in respect to the emergency valve the form of his device was not of the essence of his invention.

In the Boyden mechanism, which is alleged in this case to infringe, I have not been able to satisfy myself tha t Boyden makes use of an “auxiliary valve” in the sense in which that term is employed in the specification and in some of the claims of the patent No. 360,-070, now in suit. It appears from the specification of patent No. 360,070 that what Westinghouse meant by the auxiliary valve, which is made one of the elements of the combination in the first and fourth claims, is such a valve as he has described in his specification, and which is independent of and performs none of the functions of the main valve of the ordinary triple-valve device; and I am not satisfied, notwithstanding the very positive testimony of the complainants’ experts, that the poppet valve 22 of the Boyden mechanism is such a valve, for Boyden s poppet valve 22 does, as I understand its operation, to some extent perform the functions of a mnin valve of the triple valve as well as the function of Westinghouse’s [1000]

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Elevator Supplies Co. v. Graham & Norton Co.
44 F.2d 354 (Third Circuit, 1930)
Bowers v. San Francisco Bridge Co.
91 F. 381 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern California, 1898)
Westinghouse Air-Brake Co. v. New York Air-Brake Co.
77 F. 616 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern New York, 1896)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
66 F. 997, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 3361, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/westinghouse-v-boyden-power-brake-co-circtdmd-1895.