Court Opinion

ID: 9637883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:25:15.53066+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:01.629483
License: Public Domain

HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). There are many controversies in this ease, which I agree were forever set at rest by the earlier decision. We cannot consider Sehloemilch & Von Bronk’s patent; we cannot consider whether Armstrong’s patent was confined to a detector; possibly 'we should say that claim 15 covers any audion which can control the “feed back” of radio frequency energy by a variable inductance functionally within the wing circuit only. It is hard to say that about claim 16, because, if we so construe it, the words “resonant wing circuit,” add nothing. But in any case claim 16 is not important here.
But, when all is admitted which should be admitted, the plaintiff must still show, in a summary proceeding like this, and beyond any reasonable doubt whatever, that the condenser in the second grid circuit will operate to tune the wing circuit, so as to produce a “controlled feed back.” This is flatly denied, and I cannot see what right we have to take the issue against the defendant on affidavits. I think that the defendant can afford to admit that the condenser may be used to make the primary member of the transformer, which links the wing circuit with the second grid circuit, into a variable inductance, and that the wing circuit may thus be tuned. Indeed, I do not understand that the defendant denies this.
But its experts do say that the first audion, even when taken with the condenser of the second grid circuit, will not “control” the “feed back.” Weagant gives the rea*730sons; he says that “in tune” means one thing when applied to resonance to the frequency of the incoming waves, and another when applied to “feed back”; that is to say, the second grid circuit may be tuned to those waves, and perhaps eoineidently and necessarily the wing circuit with it, though as to that I am not clear, but in any ease this “tuning” is not the same as that necessary to any regeneration which is practically distinguishable from the mischievous “inherent” feed back acknowledged to be present in all amplifiers. Thus Weagant says that, as the critical point of these tunings is different, you cannot at once tune the wing circuit to the frequency of the received waves and accomplish “controlled feed hack.” That, of course, is a subject on which we can have no independent opinionit seems to me to stand in this record as a stark contradiction.
Perhaps the defendant has put its condenser in the second grid circuit mala fide. Even if what it says is true, it may be possible and better to tune the wing circuit to regenerate, leaving the second grid circuit off tune. That is perhaps made probable by the fact that the third and fourth grid circuits are not tuned at all. But it does not seem to me safe to go on such speculation. I do not know whether when the second grid is left off tune, if it is, that may not result in a worse condition, even though the wing circuit will then control the “feed back,” than if the second grid circuit were tuned to the received waves, and perhaps the wing circuit with it, and the wing circuit were off tune to regenerate.
I should not say that it was an infringement to make and sell the audion, if, in order for it to regenerate, the whole apparatus had to be distorted from its practical optimum. Armstrong’s patent could not mean to cover a device which structurally was capable of regenerating only at the expense of its efficiency. I do not suppose that that is asserted. So far as I can see, it must be asserted, or the issue of fact must be taken against the defendant.
In conclusion, while I do not want to throw the least question upon the propriety of a summary proceeding when we are dealing with a simple machine, or a design, or an easily understood process, I confess it does seem to me unfair to the defendant to adopt it in a ease as complicated as any involving wireless telegraphy or telephony. We are all very keenly aware of the difficulties of putting into tangible sensuous equivalents the terminology of such an art, and yet, till we can do so, I do not see how we can proceed safely; at least, I know that I cannot. I admit that it is difficult enough after a trial with cross-examination. Even then I am never confident that I am using the terms in a way that makes sense to an expert. But at least we should have the advantage of whatever light we can get, especially of subjecting the statements of experts to cross-examination. We may not merely choose to say that the defendant’s account of what takes place is false, and that the plaintiff’s account is true. After a good deal of study, I have been unable to see how we can affirm this order without taking that position.