Wright Aeronautical Corp. v. General Motors Corp.

166 F.2d 636, 77 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 8, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4086
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMarch 9, 1948
DocketNo. 8808
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 166 F.2d 636 (Wright Aeronautical Corp. v. General Motors Corp.) 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
Wright Aeronautical Corp. v. General Motors Corp., 166 F.2d 636, 77 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 8, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4086 (7th Cir. 1948).

Opinions

SPARKS, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs-appellants charged appellee with infringement of United States Patent No. 2,103,643 to Salomon, issued December 28, 1937, on an application filed March 31, 1933. It was alleged, and the court found, that the patent, at the times in issue, was owned by a Swiss corporation, hereinafter referred to as Redynam, and that Wright Aeronautical Corporation, hereinafter referred to as Wright, is the exclusive licensee for the aircraft engine field, and has been since the patent was issued.

The defendant-appellee, General Motors Corporation of Delaware, through its Allison Engineering Division, of Indianapolis, referred to hereinafter as Allison, manufactures radial, air-cooled aircraft engines including the engine alleged to infringe.

The issues raised were validity and non-infringement as to the claims sued on, namely, Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 and 18. After finding the facts specially and rendering its conclusions of law thereon, the court held there was no infringement as to any claim, but it did not pass upon the question of validity. From that ruling this appeal is prosecuted.

The patent is alleged by plaintiffs to be based upon an application filed in France on April 7, 1932, now French patent No. 748,-909. According to the present specifications, the patent here in issue is applicable to various types of machinery, stationary as well as movable, and allows the replacement of the usual fly wheels adapted to regularize [637]*637the movement of machine shafts of such machinery. Its application in the airplane engine field only is here involved. The question is whether the bifilar type of vibration damper used by appellee infringes the claims in suit which the District Court found were limited to a damper of the unifilar type.

The court found the following facts, all of which are supported by substantial evidence. Allison is, and has been for many years, a well-known manufacturer of aircraft engines of the in-line, liquid-cooled, “V”-type, similar in those respects to automobile engines which have for a long time been manufactured by Cadillac and other General Motors Divisions. These Allison engines, incorporating the centrifugal vibration dampers which are here alleged to infringe the Salomon patent, were manufactured by Allison beginning as early as January 1937, and have been sold from shortly after that date to the present time, in ever increasing quantities. There has been no material change in the design, or construction of the accused Allison vibration dampers since they were first put out by Allison.

These Allison engines were sold to the British Purchasing Commission before the United States entered the war; but as regards the issues here, those engines are like all the other engines manufactured by Allision, beginning in January 1937, including those sold to the United States Army for use in its current fighter planes such as “P-38,” “P-51,” and others.

The invention of the patent in suit is characterized by a roller movable about a stub shaft, the presence of which so limits the mass of the roller that it is incapable of accomplishing the results accomplished by defendant’s bifilar damper.

All licenses granted by plaintiffs under the Salomon patent here in suit, included other patents not here in suit.

The claims in suit were all inserted in the Salomon application after the accused Allison damper was being manufactured and sold.

Proceedings which took place and actions which were taken by or on behalf of plaintiffs, before the Commissioner of Patents and by way of communications made to defendant and the industry generally, preclude plaintiffs from maintaining that the patent in suit is of such scope as to cover a bifilar vibration damper or balancer.

Defendant Allison’s construction is best shown in the physical device which is an actual damper with its attached crankshaft, taken out of an Allison engine just as it would be actually installed in a modern fighter airplane.

Both the construction and the operation of the accused Allison damper are different from any disclosure of the Salomon patent. The accused Allison damper comprises six separate centrifugal pendulum balancers, each one of which consists of a large external damping weight which is suspended by two small pins from the flange or web attached to the crankshaft. Each of the pins passes through a hole in the weight and also through a hole in the flange. The use of those two pins, for that purpose, causes it to be known as a “bifilar suspension” of the damping weight. Its operation is dependent upon both of the pins being present. If one pin were removed, the construction would be inoperative. It is a fact, however, that the pins do not themselves perform any useful damping function in the device. Their weight is too small to have any effect on the damper; and, aside from that, taken alone they would be tuned to the wrong frequency and hence could not, by themselves, perform any useful damping function in the defendant’s construction. Their weight is not even taken into account in the calculation.

Appellants contend that the court erroneously (1) limited the scope of the patent to the phases of the unifilar type; (2) found that the bifilar, utilized by defendant, is not equivalent to the one patented; held (3) that the presence of a stub shaft in the patented device is a necessary element of the invention; (4) that defendant employs only the construction of the prior art; (5) that the claims were so broadened in the Patent Office, after defendant’s accused device appeared, as to bar this action for infringement; (6) that the arguments addressed to the Patent Office and certain written communications addressed to defendant and others, by Rubissow, the authorized agent of the owners and licensees [638]*638of the patent, precluded appellants from claiming that the accused device infringes.

At all times here involved it was well known that torsional vibrations in the form of successive twisting and untwisting effects in the crankshaft of a multiple-cyl-indered internal combustion engine are caused by successive explosions in the cylinders and that by reason thereof flexional vibrations due to “sagging” occur in the shaft. The .parties agree that the twisting and untwisting follow each other in rapid succession; that, in a modern aircraft engine such as defendant’s, there may be as many as 200 to 300 torsional oscillations per second, and that, if the oscillations are severe enough and repeated often enough, they may shatter the crankshaft. Consequently, in order to meet and counteract these dangers, torsional vibration “dampers” or “balancers” are attached to shafts of internal combustion engines, usually on the fly-wheel, which serve to reduce oscillation and vibration. So far as known, the modern airplane engine could not operate at presently required speeds in the absence of an efficiency device such as defendant employs.

It further seems uncontradicted that the art has long known three species of balan-cers or dampers. The three species referred to may be designated as friction, spring, and centrifugal pendulum dampers. The difference in achievements of each of the three is largely one of degree.

Friction dampers or balancers are discussed fully in the opinion of Clark v. Wright Aeronautical Corp., 2 Cir., 162 F.

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166 F.2d 636, 77 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 8, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4086, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wright-aeronautical-corp-v-general-motors-corp-ca7-1948.