Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/274/417.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 13:48:52+00:00

Document:
OVERLAND MOTOR CO. v. PACKARD MOTOR CAR CO.
[274 U.S. 417, 418] Mr. Melville Church, of Washington, D. C., for Overland Motor co.
Did the applicant, in canceling the claim which was finally rejected on May 20, 1911, abandon such claim or estop himself from thereafter seeking it through a new application?
This qualification is approved in the cases of In re Fay, 15 App. D. C. 517, In re Edison, 30 App. D. C. 321, 323, and in Gold v. Gold, 34 App. D. C. 229.
As the Patent Office, by granting the patent, must be held to have waived any objection to the applications [274 U.S. 417, 422] on the ground that the claim allowed had been rejected before by that Office, there is no reason why the appellees below should not be allowed to avail themselves of the waiver. The answer the first question in the negative.
In the absence of any other excuse for lapse of time between patent applications and responses thereto than that the applicant was exercising a statutory right (R. S. 4894, as amended, setting limit of one year for response), may the bill of complaint be dismissed for want of equity because of long pendency in the Patent Office?
We think that under the decision of this Court in United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 167 U.S. 224 , 17 S. Ct. 809, and Chapman v. Wintroath, 252 U.S. 126 , 40 S. Ct. 234, this question must also be answered in the negative.
Counsel for the alleged infringer says that, even with the time limit for action on the part of the applicant thus reduced to one year, it becomes easily possible for an applicant, after an action by the Patent Office upon his application, to delay for the full period of a year his response to such action, and however promptly the Patent Office may again act, he can delay another full year before replying to it, and thus by waiting a year after each official action (1) keep his application pending so as to enable him to withhold, indefinitely, his invention from the public, (2) add claims to his application covering the independent intervening developments of others, and (3) postpone the time when the public may enjoy the free use of the invention-all contrary to sound public policy.
The answer to this argument is that the matter is entirely within the control of Congress, and in order to avoid and evil suggested, Congress may reduce the time within which one who is seeking an adjustment with the Patent Office in order to obtain a patent shall act upon receipt of notice of a decision of the Patent Office in the course of the application through that office. Congress, as we have seen by the history of the statute, reduced this time from an indefinite period in 1861 to two years in 1870, and to one year in 1897, and, as provided in the last Congress, to six months. Public Act No. 690, 69th Congress, approved March 2, 1927 ( 44 Stat. 1335). [274 U.S. 417, 424] During the pendency of the application in this case, the period allowed was one year. We do not know on what principle we could apply the equitable doctrine of abandonment be laches in a case where the measure of reasonable promptness is fixed by statute, and no other ground appears by reason of which laches could be imputed to the applicant.
The case of Chapman v. Wintroath, 252 U.S. 126 , 40 S. Ct. 234, was an attempt in an interference suit to defeat a patent granted to the Chapmans on a divisional application for an improvement in deep well pumps in which the claims were the same as the claims of a patent to Wintroath, the divisional application having been made 20 months later than the date of the issue of the patent to Wintroath. It was conceded that the claims had been disclosed in the Chapman patent which had been applied for in 1909, but which had met unusual difficulties in the Patent Office, and though regularly prosecuted, as required by law and the rules of the Office, was still pending without having been passed to patent in 1915, when the controversy arose. It was admitted that the inven- [274 U.S. 417, 426] tion was clearly disclosed in the parent application of the Chapmans, but it was contended that their divisional application claiming the discovery should be denied, because of their delay of nearly 20 months in filing it after the publication of Wintroath's patent, when they had by law only one year. It was held by the Court of Appeals of the District (Wintroath v. Chapman, 47 App. D. C. 428) that the delay of more than a year constituted equitable laches and estopped the Chapmans from making its divisional claim. That holding had rested on a previous decision by the Court of Appeals in Rowntree v. Sloan, 45 App. D. C. 207. This court held that under section 4886 of the Revised Statutes, as amended March 3, 1897 (Comp. St. 9430), 2 years was granted in such a case before the right to file a divisional application had been lost. The court based its decision that the statutory period could not be reduced by equitable considerations or those of public policy on the language which we have just quoted from Mr. Justice Brewer in his opinion in the Telephone Case. The same doctrine is to be found in Crown Cork & Seal Co. v. Aluminum Co. (C. C. A.) 108 F. 845, and Columbia Motor Car Co. v. Duerr & Co. (C. C. A.) 184 F. 893.
The case of Woodbridge v. United States, 263 U.S. 50 , 44 S. Ct. 45, is cited by counsel for the defendant to sustain their view that this is a case in which the doctrine of laches and abandonment may be enforced. The Woodbridge Case was an exceptional one. Woodbridge had deliberately delayed the issue of the patent which he could have had for the asking for 9 years. He had directed the Patent Office to keep the papers upon which such issue might have been granted in the secret archives of the Patent Office, there to remain for one year a privilege which was given him under the law as it then existed. He failed after the one year to apply for the patent for the reason, because as he avowed in subsequent application, he wished there [274 U.S. 417, 427] by to postpone the period of its monopoly until a national emergency might arise in which his invention, which was for rifling cannon, should be more in demand than it then was. He was denied a patent for failure to comply with the statute. Subsequently he secured special legislation imposing the condition that he should be granted the patent, provided the court should first be satisfied that he had not forfeited or abandoned his right to a patent by publication, delay, laches or otherwise. This court held that the delay of 9 years for the avowed purpose of postponing the period of the monopoly was laches and a breach of the condition upon which he might avail himself of the special congressional privilege aranted him. Such a case has certainly no application here. The answer to the question should be in the negative.

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