Opinion ID: 211242
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Vaughan's Business History

Text: 22 Vaughan designs and manufactures chopper pumps, which are used to mix solid materials in large tanks. It claims to have supplied LD with pumps for many years. Vaughan also claims that it was in the business of large-tank mixing designs, decades before the '414 patent, with its roof-mounted chopper pump design called Scumbuster. 23 Vaughan and LD's relationship soured when Vaughan began manufacturing floor mounted systems and bid on a tank for the city of Augusta, Georgia. LD claims to have been negotiating with Augusta in late 1999 to supply Augusta with its Jetmix system, the commercial product covered by the '414 patent. In December of 1999, LD terminated Flichard Behnke, a sales engineer who had been intimately involved with the Augusta design and negotiations. Soon thereafter, Behnke was hired by Vaughan and submitted engineering drawings for nozzle layouts to Augusta, which Vaughan presented as its Flotamix System. LD claims these drawings were directly copied by Behnke from LD's previous engineering drawings. LD also includes statements from Glenn Dorsch, Vaughan's Chief Engineer and Vice President, stating: 24 What is planned and requested is for us to remove the [LD] JetMix nozzles from the drawings and put in our own floor mounts. . . . This should be very easy for Wade to do, once we get final orientations from Rich Behnke. 25 Vaughan notes that even though the nozzles were located in the same place, they constituted a special dual-nozzle design. Thus, whereas the LD Jetmix design had six nozzles, Vaughan's design had twelve. 26