Boch patent sustained

BACH [sic] BOCH PATENT

IS SUSTAINED

IMPORTANT OPINION FILED BY

JUDGE ARCHBALD.

Declares That the Electrical Porcelain

and Manufacturing Company

Has Infringed the Patent Insulator

Made by the R. Thomas & Sons

Company, and Directs That a

Master Shall Be Appointed to Ascertain

the Accrued Damages — Intricate

Question Involved.

Judge R. W. Archbald yesterday files with the clerk of the United States Circuit court, at Trenton, N. J., an opinion in which he decides for the plaintiff in the suit of the R. Thomas & Sons' company against the Electric Porcelain and Manufacturing company, Jonathan Coxon and Fred M. Locke.

This is a patent case that has attracted considerable attention. Both parties manufacture an insulator for the support of wires carrying high tension electrical currents. The plaintiff company manufacturers the insulator under a patent granted J. W. Boch, March 8, 1898, and it alleges that the insulator made by the defendants is an infringement on this patent.

The defendants do not dispute that there has been an infringement, if the Boch patent is a valid one, but they attack its validity on the ground that It has no novelty and the process involved in its manufacture is not a patentable one.

They further allege that the Idea of the Boch insulator is borrowed from an insulator which Fred M. Locke tried to have patented in 1897 and for which a patent was refused.

In making Insulators for high tension wires it is essential that the insulators themselves shall be insulated, so to speak, and to effect this they are made of two or more pieces of porcelain, one fitted into the other like two cups, one slightly smaller than the other, and a glazing material placed between them for the purpose of fusing the pieces and solidly tilling. in all spaces.

LOCKE PROCESS.

In the Locke process, the space between the inner side of the larger howl and the outer side of the smaller bowl were filled with a glaze and then the insulator was annealed.

The Boch process follows the Locke process as far as the Locke process goes, but it goes much farther according to the claims of the plaintiffs and the findings of Judge Archbald.

The Boch process demands that cups when put in the annealing oven shall be placed with the rims upward, and that in a channel, grooved out between the rims, an extra quantity of glaze shall be poured so that as the annealing and fusing process goes on the filling up of the most minute space is assured.

The Locke process did not call for the extra glaze and the cups were placed in the oven without regard to position. The consequence was that there being allowance for the contraction of the porcelain while it was being baked, there was no positive ass trance that the whole space between the cups would be filled.

The Locke process, Judge Archbald says, was one that any ordinary potter might follow. The Boch idea of providing absolutely for the perfect filling in of all the space existing before baking or caused by the baking is that of genius, and therefore an invention.

BOCH PATENT SUSTAINED.

He sustains the Boch patent, declares that the defendants are infringing it, and directs that a decree he drawn for the appointment of a master to ascertain what damages the plaintiff's company has sustained by reason of the infringement.

The case was tried before Judge Archbald while specially presiding in Trenton. The arguments were made before him in this city. Hubert Howson represented the plaintiff and Howard P. Dennison the defendants.