Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/94950/holland-furniture-co-vs-perkins-glue
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 08:17:28+00:00

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1. The narrowing by disclaimer of the process claims of a patent does not necessarily narrow the product claims. P. 277 U. S. 254 .
2. A patentable process is a method of treatment of certain materials to produce a particular result or product. The description of the process does not necessarily embrace the product. Either or both may be patentable. P. 277 U. S. 255 .
3. If the choice or designation of an essential ingredient of a composition of matter may be called a process, the process is one inseparable from the composition itself; the description of one necessarily limits the other, and the patent of the product cannot extend beyond a product having the designated ingredient. Id.
4. A patent for a composition of matter should contain some description of the ingredients entering into the composition which will both define the invention and carry it beyond the previous development of the art. P. 277 U. S. 254 .
5. A patentee of a composition of matter, the product of a process, cannot, by claiming the use or function of the product, extend his monopoly over like products made with ingredients not described in his patent. P. 277 U. S. 257 .
6. Respondent's patent (Perkins reissue, No. 13436, limited by disclaimers) includes claims, not here in dispute, for a process of making starch glue by treating with caustic alkali and water any starch in which the capacity to absorb water is limited by nature or by artificial "degeneration" to a degree specified in the patent, resulting in a glue as good as animal glue for wood veneering and similar uses. It also includes product claims of which three (Nos. 28, 30, and 31), forming the only subject matter of adjudication in the case, are construed a claiming, in substance, any starch glue which, combined with about three parts or less by weight of water, will have substantially the same properties as animal glue. The characteristic quality of animal glue is that, when combined with three parts or less by weight of water, it is suitable for use in wood veneering. Held that the claims are void, as they do not describe the starch ingredient in terms of its own physical or chemical properties or those of the product, but wholly in terms of the use or function of the product. P. 277 U. S. 256 .
Certiorari, 275 U.S. 512, to a decree of the circuit court of appeals, reversing the district court and holding the present petitioner liable as an infringer of certain claims of the respondent's patent.
Respondent brought this suit in the District Court for Western Michigan to enjoin infringement of the Perkins reissued patent, No. 13,436. So much of the judgment for the defendant, petitioner here, as held the product claims of the patent not infringed by respondent's product, was reversed by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Perkins Glue Co. v. Holland Furniture Co., 18 F.2d 387. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Perkins Glue Co. v. Gould Manufacturing Co., 292 F. 596, and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Perkins Glue Co. v. Standard Furniture Co., 287 F. 109, had previously held the patent not infringed by the same product. * This Court granted certiorari. 275 U.S. 512.
The patent is entitled "A Patent for Starch Glue and a Method of Making It." Perkins was the first to make successfully a starch glue suitable for wood veneering and similar uses. Glue made from animal substances, known as animal glue, has long been in common use as an adhesive, and is especially adapted to use in wood veneering, in which thin sheets or layers of wood are fastened together by the use of an adhesive bonding material. The characteristic qualities of animal glue making it peculiarly suitable for that use are a low absorptiveness of water and a consequent high degree of fluidity, facilitating its application by mechanical means, high elasticity, and great tensile strength. A high water content, characteristic of other adhesive preparations, delays drying, warps the wood, and, when dry, leaves too little bonding material to secure the requisite strength. In practice, animal glue is made suitably fluid for use in wood veneering by the addition of a critically small amount of water, three parts by weight to one of glue.
patent (1893, French, No. 232,781) described a process of producing an adhesive or glue by dissolving starch in a solution of caustic alkali. The suitability of starch as a glue base in this and other processes depends upon its water absorptive quality, which varies with the starch of different plants, and under varying conditions with the starch of the same plant. Because of their high water absorption, glues produced from starch, before Perkins, were too viscous, and hence required too large an admixture of water for use successfully as a wood-veneering glue. The controlling difficulty to be overcome in the development of a starch glue suitable for veneering was what may be called the normally large water absorptive quality of starch, corresponding to the viscosity of the resultant glue, a reduction of the one effecting a reduction in the other.
It has long been known that the viscosity or the water absorptive quality of starches may be reduced by chemical treatment known as degeneration, in which changes in the arrangement of the atoms in the starch molecules are effected by use of a catalytic agent. In 1906, Gerson & Sachse (German, No. 167275) patented a process for the preparation of a starch base for glue manufacture by degenerating starch by the use of oxidizing agents in the presence of an alkali. But the resultant glue from this and other processes was not suitable for use in the woodworking trades. To make it sufficiently fluid for convenient use required too large an admixture of water, four parts or more to one of glue, so that the wood was warped, and, when dried, the glue was not sufficiently tenacious to be used successfully as a substitute in that manufacture for animal glue.
The Perkins patent described a process for making glue from starch and a resultant product "as good as animal glue," "which will have the great practical advantage that it may be practically used for the same purposes as the best animal glue." The process consisted of two steps.
The basic material was a suitable raw starch, preferably starch made from the cassava root, and the first step was concerned with its conversion or degeneration so as to make a "glue base" with lower water absorptivity than ordinary untreated starch. This was to be accomplished by combining the basic raw material with oxidizing agents and subjecting them to heat. The method was that described in the Gerson & Sachse patent, and was not new. The characteristic feature of this first step, as described by Perkins, was not the manner of degeneration, but its degree. The degeneration of the raw cassava starch was to be carried to a point just short of its conversion into dextrine, a soluble starch, which, because of that property, is of little value in glue manufacture. The patent, in its reissued form, stated with precision the particular degree to which the water absorptive properties of the starch might be reduced in the preparation of a suitable glue base, and described with particularity tests (the "9 to 1 boil up" test and the 170 test) for ascertaining when that stage of degeneration had been reached.
caustic potash, will produce glue of ample fluidity without loss of tensile strength or other qualities characteristic of animal glue.
The product claims, of which more will be said presently, was for the resultant glue, in substance for a starch glue having substantially the properties of animal glue.
"28. A glue comprising cassava carbohydrate rendered semifluid by digestion and having substantially the properties of animal glue."
"30. A wood and fiber glue formed of a starchy carbohydrate or its equivalent by union therewith of about 3 parts or less by weight of water and alkali metal hydroxide."
"31. A wood and fiber glue containing amylaceous material as a base dissolved without acid in about three parts of water or less, and being viscous, semifluid and unjellified."
product claims in suit are for a starch glue, which, combined with about three parts or less by weight of water, will have substantially the same properties as animal glue.
high in viscosity, and employing water to any extent, and even though the product would not approximate Perkins' glue, and hence thought them invalid. If that view is correct, they were too broad. At the conclusion of its opinion the court said that the decree below"
"sustaining the claims for the glue base and [first step] product, and for the so-called second-step as such, is reversed, and that part of it which upholds the claims of the patent for the final process and the resultant product is affirmed."
We may assume also the correctness of the view of the court below that the effect of this decision was to sustain broadly the claim to the resultant product, the glue described in Claims 28, 30, and 31, as distinguished from the intermediate product which was the resultant of the first step and was found to be old, and that the product claims thus upheld included a starch glue having substantially the properties of animal glue whether made by the employment of both steps of the compound process or not.
"any process of making glue, excepting where the starch or starchy product or carbohydrate subjected to the process, is degenerated to the extent described [in the patent], whereby the process results in the good as animal glue described"
in the patent. Again, we assume that the court below was right in saying that the effect of the disclaimer as to the second-step claims was to limit them to a process where the material with which the second process step begins is any starch in fact degenerated to the point necessary to produce the result at which the second process step is aimed, whether the degeneration is effected by the first step or other artificial process or the suitable starch is a natural agricultural product, sufficiently degenerated without chemical treatment and purchasable in commercial quantities.
The second-step process, as narrowed by the disclaimer, consists in the selection of a starch suitably degenerated, no matter how, and the treatment of it with an alkali as in the Gerard and Dornemann patents, but, by the terms of the disclaimer, only such starches are suitable -- that is to say, fall within the range of selection, which, when treated by the second-step process, will product a glue as good as animal glue for veneering. The use or function of the resultant glue is made the measure or test of the choice of its ingredients.
Apparently no brand of raw starch which Perkins could procure in commercial quantities when conducting his experiments could be used as a glue base without the artificial degeneration of his first step. But it appears that the defendant has been able to purchase in such quantities a starch which is a natural agricultural product having a low water absorptiveness and other characteristics making it suitable for use as a glue base. Beginning with this starch the petitioner mixes the starch with three parts of water or less and approximately 4% of caustic soda. The mixture, when agitated and heated, produces a glue which petitioner says is heavier than animal glue, but which is used commercially as a substitute for it, and which, for present purposes, may be taken as having substantially the qualities of animal glue. Whether the result may be attributed wholly to reduced viscosity of the starch, due to changed methods of cultivation or manufacture, or in some measure to peculiarities of petitioner's dissolving operation, does not appear.
contention has bearing only upon the broad product claims which are the subject of the present suit. It is the contention of the respondent, and the court below held, that its product claims 28, 30, and 31, concededly broad enough, as stated, to cover the petitioner's product, are valid, and that all starch veneering glues, at least when mixed with three parts of water or less, having substantially the properties of animal glue, infringe the patent, whether made by Perkins' process or otherwise.
if made with three parts of water, and a thin glue not strong enough for wood veneering if made with four parts or more of water.
Perkins' real invention, apart from the combination of his first and second step processes, with which we are not now concerned, was that, by the use of a particular kind of starch as an ingredient, a new composition of matter was made for which he claimed his patent. Some description of this product was obviously essential to patentability, and Perkins, in the reissued patent, sought to meet this necessity in two ways. One was to describe the product by describing its characteristic ingredient with particularity. If we look at the specifications, as we may, he did this by indicating the range of water absorptivity,or, stated in another way, the degeneration, of the starch ingredient in Perkins' glue. As described, the starch ingredient fell short of dextrine or soluble starch, but was of lower water absorptivity than petitioner's glue base. The glue made of this ingredient within the specified range was a new product. This was invention of a new composition of matter, and was the real contribution Perkins made to the art. As such, it was entitled to the protection of a patent, but as thus described and limited, petitioner's product does not infringe.
inaccurately as we think, as a process, the "process" is one inseparable from the composition itself. The description of one necessarily limits the other. Hence, the patent of the product cannot extend beyond a product having the designated ingredient. See Giant Powder Co. v. California Powder Works, 98 U. S. 126 , 98 U. S. 137 ; Bene v. Jeantet, supra; Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co. v. Davis, 102 U. S. 222 .
Perkins' second way of describing the starch ingredient of his product was in terms of the use or function of the product itself. The chosen starch ingredient was to possess such qualities that, when combined with three parts of water and with alkali, it would produce a product "as good as animal glue" for veneering, or having the properties of animal glue, these properties being described in terms of its functions. The ingredient was thus described not in terms of its own physical characteristics or chemical properties or those of the product, but wholly in terms of the manner of use of the product. Any glue made of a starch base, whatever its composition, water absorptiveness, or other properties, combined with alkali and three parts of water, which has substantially the properties of animal glue, or is as good as animal glue for use in the wood-working trades, is claimed as Perkins' glue. Thus, the inventor who advances the art by discovery that a certain defined material may be combined in a product useful for certain purposes seeks to extend his monopoly to any product which may subsequently be made from materials not within any defined range described in the patent, but which is likewise useful for those purposes.
But an inventor may not describe a particular starch glue which will perform the function of animal glue and then claim all starch glues which have those functions, or even all starch glues made with three parts of water and alkali, since starch glues may be made with three parts of water and alkali that do not have those properties.
See the Incandescent Lamp Patent, 159 U. S. 465 , 159 U. S. 472 .
"and of the manner and process of making, constructing, compounding, and using, it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make, construct, compound, and use the same."
same vice as is the attempt to describe a patentable device or machine in terms of its function. As a description of the invention, it is insufficient, and, if allowed, would extend the monopoly beyond the invention. See Bene v. Jeantet, supra; Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, 111 U. S. 293 ; Incandescent Lamp Patent, supra; Matheson v. Campbell, 78 F. 910; American Adamite Co. v. Mesta Machine Co., 18 F.2d 538.
So far as respondent seeks to enlarge its product patent by subordinating the patent description of the starch ingredient which the patentee used, and which respondent does not use, to the vague and indefinite description in the three product claims now in suit the patent is subject to the same vice.
* Other cases involving the patent in suit are Perkins Glue Co. v. Solva Waterproof Glue Co., 223 F. 792; Solva Waterproof Glue Co. v. Perkins Glue Co., 251 F. 64; Perkins Glue Co. v. Hood, 279 F. 454; Perkins Glue Co. v. Holland Furniture Co., 279 F. 457; Perkins Glue Co. v. Standard Furniture Co., 279 F. 458; Perkins Glue Co. v. Gould Mfg. Co., 280 F. 728; Perkins Glue Co. v. Crandall Panel Co., 294 F. 135.

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