Interference No. 103,414
12). Mr. James H. Vickers, Product Engineer
for Southco and named inventor in the Junior
Party Ellis patent application (Vickers, ER
11:1-4), also received a copy of the
handwritten letter from Mr. Wright to Mr.
O'Rourke that same day. (Vickers, ER 11:5-
9). Mr. Wright's June 9, 1992 letter is
identified as “Ellis Exhibit 2”.
5. Mr. Wright identified in his June 9, 1992
letter three specific conditions which
Unistrut desired to have met for its
“Telestrut” telescoping strut system: in
particular, a single rivet that could be used
to connect a fitting to a single tube, tube
to tube, and fitting to two tubes. Mr.
Wright's comment in his letter that “we seem
to have great difficulty when trying number
3" refers to the rivets which Southco had
previously sent to Unistrut and the failure
of those rivets to satisfy the third
condition, which is to connect two tubes plus
one fitting. (Vickers, ER 11:9-17). The
problem presented by the Unistrut
requirements was the range of grips required
for a single rivet to provide a tight fit for
a single tube as well as to provide a tight
fit for two tubes together with a fitting.
The rivet which has been supplied failed to
satisfy the requirement of the larger grip.
(O'Rourke, ER 2:13-17).
[The three-stage rivet]
6. On June 10, 1992, Mr. Vickers, Mr. Thomas
J. Ellis, a Manufacturing Engineer for
Southco and named inventor in the Ellis
patent application (Ellis, ER 5:1-4), and Mr.
William R. Frame, Manager of Manufacturing
Technologies for Southco (Frame, ER 16:1-2),
met at Southco's corporate headquarters in
Concordville, Pennsylvania in order to
discuss the design of the rivet sample
previously supplied to Unistrut and
Unistrut's reaction to that rivet sample
(Ellis, ER 5:5-10; Vickers, ER 12:1-5; and
Frame, ER 16:3-8). Mr. Vickers advised
Messrs. Frame and Ellis at that meeting that
Unistrut now wanted a single rivet to meet
the multiple requirements imposed by
Unistrut's “Telestrut” telescoping strut
App. 2
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