Court Opinion

ID: 9638376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:42:30.53911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:06.122121
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge,
(dissenting in part).
The present Hughes Tool Company, and its predecessors of the same name, have for about forty years enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the west in the manufacture and sale of rotary bits for drilling oil and gas wells, maintained by a series of patents, obtained or bought, on such equipment. Most of the patents have expired and only the last four were involved in this suit. Pending appeal the earliest of the four issued to Fletcher as No. 1,856,627 expired, and in oral argument it was dropped from the contention since there was no award of damages for infringement. Nothing need be said about it. The next, issued to Scott and Garfield as No. 1,983,316, and referred to as the Three Cone Bit, was issued Dec. 4, 1934, and still has a life of more than two years. It is the bit which the defendants copied. Though a combination patent of old elements I agree that the combination advanced the drilling art, and was patentable and the relief as to it was properly grant-, ed.
The next patent, issued to Scott as No. 2,011,084 on Aug. 13, 1935, is for “rolling bearings” as a mounting for the rotating cones used in the drill heads. Some of the claims speak of “rolling bearings” which might include both balls and rollers in the bearings, but other claims speak only of balls, and the- drawings show only balls, and rollers could not be used for the taking of the horizontal thrust or to keep the cones on the spindle. Only the -claims for ball bearings are supported by the disclosure. Ball bearings to do away with friction and to minimize the necessity for lubrication are very old. Judge Wilson found novelty in the apparently ingenious method of introducing through a hole the circle of balls intended to hold the cones on the shaft, without a nut; Hughes Tool Co. v. United Machine Co., D.C., 35 F.Supp. 879. But the Tenth Circuit, Williams Iron Works v. Hughes Tool Co., 109 F.2d 500, Headnote 15, page 511, held claims 7 and 8 based on this feature involved no invention. The old patent to Mendenhall, No. 31,516, showed precisely this use of balls, inserted through a hole which was afterwards plugged up, for the purpose of holding a wheel on an axle. Other patents in the well drilling art had taught the use of ball bearings to eliminate lubrication. If there was any invention it covers only the exact combination shown. This patent was not successful, the making of drill heads embodying it was soon discontinued, and there is no proof that the defendants here ever made such. The patent is not really involved in this case.
The final patent to Garfield and Scott, No. 2,030,442, issued Feb. 11, 1936, according to which the bearings of conical drill heads are now made, is critical and has four years to run. I most earnestly insist that it, and especially the claims put in issue, are invalid in view of the prior art and of general mechanical skill when conception of it is claimed. It is an improvement on the Ball Bearing Patent above discussed, overcoming weakness therein, according to Williams Iron Works Co. v. Hughes Tool Co., supra, 109 F.2d at page 508. What the weakness was is not there stated, nor explained in this record. I think it is inferable from well known facts. Balls must be very hard and consequently brittle. Under heavy pressure, passing in succession from ball to ball, two mere points on opposite sides of the ball must sustain the entire pressure, and the ball may crush or deface its raceway. In a roller bearing, where a cylinder of any desired length- replaces the ball, instead of a single point sustaining the pressure, it is distributed along a line of the roller whose ability to withstand it may be fifty or a hundred times that *793of a ball. Roller bearings are therefore much superior to balls to sustain pressure transverse to their length and to the axle, but cannot sustain any pressure parallel thereto, even if in a raceway, for the roller ends will be chewed off. Neither is a roller bearing available to hold the wheel on the axle or spindle. This has been common mechanical knowledge for a long time. In the first decade of this century all the automobile catalogues described their bearings. The rear wheels were firmly fastened to the rear axles, the thrust parallel to the axle being taken care of by the fixed wheel at one end and the gear wheel at the other. The heavy 'thrust was downward, transverse of the axle, and it was borne by a frictionless roller bearing. The front wheels turned on a short spindle, (like the cones in this case), and side thrusts occurred in turning the car from side to side, or on ground slanting sidewise. To care for this and to hold the wheel on the spindle, ball bearings were used. The differing usefulness of the two kinds of bearings was recognized in the Mendenhall patent, granted in 1885, where a car wheel turning on its axle and bearing a very heavy weight, was fitted with double roller bearings to carry the weight, and a ball bearing running in a raceway was used to take the side thrusts and keep the wheel on the axle. There was even a hole to put the balls into the raceway, without the use of a nut, the hole to be afterwards plugged up. These functions are all clearly taught in the Mendenhall disclosure. Now in this case the cones are wheels running around in a small circle on short spindles. At first there were plain bushed bearings, but as drill stems became longer and heavier, frictionless ball bearings were put in by patent No. 2,011,084. The evidence is that by far the greater part of the weight rests upon the outer edge of the cones. When the balls there proved insufficient, rollers were substituted. A ring of balls was left to take side thrusts and to hold the cone on the spindle. I see only mechanical skill in that. The method of putting the balls in the raceway without a nut, is as old as Mendenhall. Mendenhall used a combination of rollers, balls, and hole to put them in precisely for the same purposes that Garfield and Scott did. Moreover, in the drilling art in the patent to Pickin, No. 1,302,967, May 6, 1919, for a Roller Drill we find the same combination of rollers and balls to mount the rotating cutting members. Fletcher and Kuldell, No. 1,918,902, applied for Sept. 12, 1931, and granted July 18, 1933, shows in a conical cutter the combination of rollers and balls.
Passing by several patents which show a similar combination, I come to the Three Cones Bit patent above mentioned which we are sustaining. The application was filed April 17, 1932. The drawing (Record p. 324) shows with perfect clarity the exact combination of rollers and balls and the plugged hole to put the balls through. The claims, however, do not assert anything patented as to the bearings.' But the disclosure, in lines 50 to 60 of the first page says: “We have shown the shaft as recessed adjacent to the head to form a raceway 5, for a row of roller bearings 6. The shaft also has an annular groove to receive the ball bearings which serve to hold the cutter on the shaft. These balls are inserted through a channel through the shaft, said channel being then plugged by a cylindrical plug.” This exactly describes the combination under discussion. On this disclosure as consideration the Three Cone Bit patent was granted. Now on October 28, 1933, the application was filed to patent this very combination and not only in respect of Hughes Three Cone Bit, but all “roller cutters in deep well drills.” The applicants apparently did not on April 17, 1933, think the bearing combination patentable. It does not seem right to me to go back six months later and apply for another and later patent on part of what was previously disclosed.
But at last the claims here held valid and infringed are certainly too broad. Typical are claims 12, 13, and 14. “12. A cup-shaped roller cutter (i. e. any sort of cone-like cutter) having an internal roller raceway adjajacent to its rim, and an internal ball raceway adjacent to its bottom.” “14. A roller cutter bearing having an external roller raceway and an external ball raceway between said roller raceway and the end *794of said bearing.” Anybody would infringe these claims who, on any kind of a bit having one 'or many cutters, used a bearing which combined rollers and balls. Other more descriptive claims, such as 6, are nearly as broad. It seems preposterous to me to extend the monopoly of Hughes for sevaral more years on this unpatentable combination. As to this patent I strongly dissent.