Union Oil Co. of California v. American Bitumuls Co.

This is an appeal from an interlocutory decree holding valid and infringed the two claims of patent No. 1,643,675 issued September 27, 1927, to John Alexander Mont-gomerie and ordering an accounting.

This patent covers a process for manufacturing a stable emulsion of asphalt. As the patent states, a process was known for preparing an aqueous bituminous emulsion. This old process required the addition of a small proportion of fatty acid or resin oil and then adding with agitation a dilute solution of caustic soda, or caustic potash, or sodium or potassium carbonate, at a temperature of about 215° or 225° F. The same result could be obtained by the addition of soap with agitation to the melted asphalt and water. The patentee claims to have discovered that such an emulsion could be prepared without the addition of fatty acid or resin oil if the melted bitumen was poured into a hot dilute, aqueous, alkaline solution, or vice versa.

At the time the patentee made his discovery, he was experimenting with Mexican asphalt, a refinery product consisting of the residuum left after removing by distillation all the more volatile parts of the Mexican crude petroleum oil, including the…