Opinion ID: 1568047
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Alleged Improper Conduct of Procter.

Text: The District Court adverted to evidence tending to show certain improper conduct on the part of Procter. Counsel for Procter, in their brief, attempt to brush it aside on two grounds: (1) the charges are untrue; (2) If overzealous employees of the defendants did certain things which should not have been done, the remedy for their misconduct should not be found in this patent case. True it is that these charges, even if sustained, have no effect on the validity of the Bodman patent. We think, however, that they are of no little importance on the question of infringement, though we must, as the District Judge pointed out, be careful lest they put out of focus the correct legal point of view. There was positive testimony by one Toner, an employee of Lever, that, under a bribe by one Lamping, Procter's employe, he obtained from Lever's Research Department experimental cakes of the new Bodman soap and delivered them to Lamping. Lamping, when questioned about these transactions, refused to answer (on advice of counsel) upon the privilege against self-incrimination. A like course of conduct was pursued by Smelser, Procter's Director of Market Research. The testimony of Mills, an important official of Procter, and the testimony of Mr. Deupree, President of Procter, as to the conversation with Mr. Countway, President of Lever, in January, 1938, were shifty and evasive. Mr. Countway testified positively as to this conversation and made it the subject of correspondence with a business associate. According to Mr. Countway, Mr. Deupree was quite disturbed over the idea that Lever would put a soap on the market to compete with Old Ivory Soap, and Mr. Deupree admitted that, as early as December, 1937, Procter had procured sample cakes of the new Bodman soap. The application under the Pease patent for a soap making machine referred expressly to the Bodman application, then pending in the Patent Office. The Pease patent was assigned to Lever. Richardson, Associate Director of Procter's Chemical Research Division, admitted that he learned of the Pease patent late in 1936, that he examined it with great interest and The suspicion (that Lever planned to bring out on the market a new floating toilet soap) may or may not have begun with the Pease patent, that was an important factor in my whole thinking about Lever's purpose. One of Lever's exhibits was a sketch in the handwriting of Mills, dated December 20, 1937, entitled Low Moisture Floating Soap of Fine Texture, which contained a summary of many of the qualities of soap and many of the results claimed by Bodman. There was testimony that shortly after the date of the Mills memorandum, Procter issued orders for new apparatus. And it is not denied that the New Ivory Soap was placed on sale in March, 1940, about ten months before Lever's Swan Soap went on the market. No striking improvement had been made in Old Ivory Soap, in order to give it an appreciable number of the advantages of milled soap, for a number of years. On April 2, 1940, Procter obtained (as assignee of Eagen, an employee of its Research Department) a patent for a milled toilet soap which will float in water. Eagen's big idea was to create a cavity in a bar of milled soap which would cause the bar to float. The Eagen soap was a commercial flop, because wear and use would expose the cavity and the bar of soap would promptly sink. The Eagen patent discoursed quite eloquently on the advantages of a milled type of floating toilet soap. Under these circumstances, we hardly think it is passing strange that counsel for Lever contend that Procter deliberately embarked upon a course of what has been called imperfect infringement, under which an attempt is made to pilfer many of the essential features of a patent, in the hope that the pilferer may avoid the legal consequences of his deplorable conduct on the ground that either the pilfered patent may be adjudged invalid or that the imperfect copying may be declared as lacking in infringement.