Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/293/1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 20:55:30+00:00

Document:
Radio Corporation of America v. Radio Engineering Laboratories, Inc.
1. Where this Court has affirmed a decree upholding a patent in a suit presenting the issue of priority between those who were rival claimants in the patent office proceedings, upon the ground that the unsuccessful party had failed to establish his superior right by thoroughly convincing evidence, the decree is not conclusive upon a stranger to that record in a subsequent suit against him for infringement, but it is persuasive as a precedent where the issue in the second suit and the evidence concerning it are the same as before. P. 293 U. S. 7.
2. Patents Nos. 1,507,016 and 1,507,017, to Lee De Forest, Sept. 2, 1924, for a "feed back" and an audion "oscillator," sustained upon the evidence as to priority of discovery. P. 293 U. S. 10.
3. A patentee is entitled not only to the uses for his invention that were apparent when it was made, but also to other uses then dimly apprehended, but realized later. P. 293 U. S. 14.
66 F.2d 768 reversed; 1 F.Supp. 65 affirmed.
against an infringer. Because of the pendency of a petition for rehearing, the opinion, delivered at the last Term, was not published in vol. 292. It is now printed with the amendments that were directed by the order of October 8, 1934, denying the rehearing. See post, p. 522.
The petitioners, assignees of two patents, Nos. 1,507,016 and 1,507,017, granted to Lee De Forest on September 2, 1924, have sued to restrain an infringement and for other relief.
Long before this suit, the rival claimants to the invention, Armstrong and De Forest, had fought out between themselves the legal battle now renewed. The outcome of their contest was a decree whereby priority of invention was found in accordance with the patents now assailed by the respondent, a decree binding on the claimants and their several assignees. For the purpose of any controversy between Armstrong and De Forest, the validity of the patents must be accepted as a datum. Even for the purpose of a controversy with strangers, there is a presumption of validity, a presumption not to be overthrown except by clear and cogent evidence. The question is whether the respondent has sustained that heavy burden.
At the outset, there were four claimants to priority of title. All four, acting independently, had made the same or nearly the same discovery at times not widely separate. The prize of an exclusive patent falls to the one who had the fortune to be first. Du Bois v. Kirk, 158 U. S. 58, 158 U. S. 66; Evans v. Eaton, 3 Wheat. 454. The others gain nothing for all their toil and talents. Of the four claimants, Langmuir filed an application for a patent on October 29, 1913, claiming August 1, 1913, as the date of his invention. Armstrong filed an application on October 29, 1913, and a second one on December 18, 1913, fixing the date of his invention as the fall of 1912 or the beginning of 1913. As early as October 6, 1914, he received a patent covering the subject matter of his first application (patent No. 1,113,149), but not the subject matter of his second. Meissner filed an application on March 16, 1914, fixing the date of his invention as April 9, 1913. De Forest filed an application on March 20, 1914, and another on September 23, 1915, fixing as the date of his invention August 6, 1912, the earliest date of all, which would make him the first inventor if the claim could be made good.
an interlocutory decree for an injunction and an accounting. 279 F. 445. The Circuit Court of Appeals (per Manton, J.) affirmed. 280 F. 584. In the meanwhile, the interference proceedings went on in the Patent Office. On March 31, 1923, the Commissioner of Patents rendered a decision which gave priority to Armstrong. There was an appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, invested at that time with supervisory jurisdiction in the administration of the patent laws. Butterworth v. Hoe, 112 U. S. 50, 112 U. S. 60; Postum Cereal Co. v. California Fig Nut Co., 272 U. S. 693. The Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the Commissioner, and decreed priority of invention in favor of De Forest. 54 App.D.C. 391, 298 F. 1006. On September 2, 1924, pursuant to the mandate of that court, patents Nos. 1,507,016 and 1,507,017 were issued by the Patent Office.
"where the question decided in the patent office is one between contesting parties as to priority of invention, the decision there made must be accepted as controlling upon that question of fact in any subsequent suit between the same parties, unless the contrary is established by testimony which in character and amount carries thorough conviction."
153 U.S. at 153 U. S. 125. The second case 273 U.S. 670) adds to that presumption of validity the support of the familiar principle, repeatedly applied in our decisions, that the concurrent findings of the courts below will be accepted by this Court "unless clear error is shown." See, e.g., United States v. State Investment Co., 264 U. S. 206, 264 U. S. 211; Texas & N.O. R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, 281 U. S. 548, 281 U. S. 558; United States v. Commercial Credit Co., 286 U. S. 63, 286 U. S. 67.
appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the decree was reversed by a divided court with instructions to dismiss the bill. 66 F.2d 768. A majority of the court adhered to the conclusion which it had announced eleven years before. 280 F. 584. A dissenting opinion enforced the view that De Forest's title as inventor, conclusively established as between himself and Armstrong, should be held, upon substantially the same record, to be good also against others. A writ of certiorari issued from this Court. 290 U.S. 624.
"no such judgment or adjudication shall affect the right of any person except the parties to the suit and those deriving title under them subsequent to the rendition of such judgment."
"the presumption of the validity of the patent is such that the defense of invention by another must be established by the clearest proof -- perhaps beyond reasonable doubt."
F. 913; Rousso v. First Nat. Bank, 37 F.2d 281; Cary v. Domestic Spring-Bed Co., 27 F. 299; 3 Robinson, Patents, § 1017.
judges. Gradations of difference so subtle are not susceptible of pursuit without leading us into a land of shadows. This Court held the view when these patents were last before it that the evidence was insufficient to overcome the presumption of their validity in any clear or certain way. If our estimate of probative values had been different, the invention must have gone to Armstrong, no matter though other courts or administrative officers had been persuaded to the contrary. The evidence that was insufficient at that time to evoke a clear conviction that the patents were invalid is the same in all essentials as the evidence before us now. We must pronounce a like decree unless we are prepared to say. in the light of fuller argument. that the first decree was wrong.
from the filament, passing from the plate to another or output circuit. De Forest's "audion" changed the Fleming tube by interposing a special wire known as the "grid" between the filament and the plate, thereby increasing its capacity as a detector of waves of radio or inaudible frequency and serving better to transform them into waves of audible frequency.
The device established itself almost at once as a revolutionary improvement in the art of transmitting sounds at great distances by wire and through the air. At the beginning, however, its potencies were not fully appreciated by electrical experts -- not even by its inventor. Many experiments were made with a view to exploring its capacities and developing them. Among those interested and curious was Armstrong, then a very young man, a student in the school of electrical engineering at Columbia University. He conceived the idea about January, 1913, that, through a hook-up or coupling of the output and the input circuit, there would be a feed-back or regeneration of energy whereby the plate in the audion would become an independent generator of continuous oscillations. Tuning the circuit to the appropriate frequency, he found that the messages communicated through the antenna of a radio station were heard with a new clearness. Signals from distant lands were borne to him across the seas.
claims were broad enough, was entitled to the benefit of other and related uses made manifest thereafter.
We think that for all these contentions of De Forest adequate support exists in the record and the law. There is evidence that, in August, 1912, he discussed with his assistants the possibility of using sustained oscillations of the audion in generating and transmitting radio waves as well as those of audio frequency. There is evidence that, intermittently in 1913, he worked upon that theory, and particularly that, on April 17 of that year, at Palo Alto, California, he received a clear note, the true heterodyne beat note, from the radio signal station at San Francisco Beach with the aid of the coupled circuits. The entry in his notebook made the same day tells us, "This day I got the long looked-for beat note." This was long before he had heard of Armstrong or of like experiments by anyone. There is evidence that, in the early part of 1914, he renewed his investigation in that field of research, after being temporarily diverted, and finally, on February 27, 1941, recorded in his notebook, as the outcome of a number of experiments, that he had "full proof that the audion acts as a generator of high frequency currents."
patent, the delay being extraordinary, it is argued, if a conception so important in its possibilities of profit and utility was present in his mind. For this delay he gives his explanations -- lack of funds, preoccupation with other uses of the audion having a cash value at the moment (its use, for illustration, as a telephone repeater), and perhaps chiefly the belief that he was a pioneer in the art without a rival in the offing. These explanations, even if not wholly convincing, are not so manifestly inadequate as to lead us to say that the conception of the oscillator as a generator of radio frequencies has been proved in any clear or certain way to have been developed and applied by Armstrong before it was born in De Forest's mind. To say this, moreover, would not be enough -- even if we were willing to go so far, which, as already stated, we are not. Vacuum tube oscillators have a commercial use for other purposes besides radio. If De Forest's explanations and excuses were to be disregarded altogether, the result at most would be that the apparatus of the coupled circuits had potencies and values more important than the uses that were immediately apparent -- potencies and values at least dimly apprehended, and never discarded or forgotten down to the time of their complete fruition. The benefit of all alike belonged to the inventor. Corona Cord Tire Co. v. Dovan Chemical Corp., 276 U. S. 358, 276 U. S. 369; Roberts v. Ryer, 91 U. S. 150, 91 U. S. 157; Stow v. Chicago, 104 U. S. 547, 104 U. S. 550; cf. Lovell Manufacturing Co. v. Cary, 147 U. S. 623, 147 U. S. 634; The Telephone Cases, 126 U. S. 1; Robinson, Patents, Vol. 1, § 81, p. 124.
"Whenever a patent on application is refused, either by the Commissioner of Patents or by the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia upon appeal from the commissioner, the applicant may have remedy by bill in equity, and the court having cognizance thereof, on notice to adverse parties and other due proceedings had, may adjudge that such applicant is entitled, according to law, to receive a patent for his invention, as specified in his claim, or for any part thereof, as the facts in the case may appear. . . ."
"Whenever there are interfering patents, any person interested in any one of them, or in the working of the invention claimed under either of them, may have relief against the interfering patentee, and all parties interested under him, by suit in equity against the owners of the interfering patent, and the court, on notice to adverse parties, and other due proceedings had according to the course of equity, may adjudge and declare either of the patents void in whole or in part, or inoperative, or invalid in any particular part of the United States, according to the interest of the parties in the patent or the invention patented. But no such judgment or adjudication shall affect the right of any person except the parties to the suit and those deriving title under them subsequent to the rendition of such judgment."

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