Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/264/463/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 02:33:29+00:00

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Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 264 › Webster Elec. Co. v. Splitdorf Elec. Co.
1. Upon a review by certiorari, the Court is not called upon to consider questions not raised by the petition for the writ. P. 264 U. S. 464.
2. Clams 7 and 8 of Patent No. 1,280, 105, issued to Kane, September 24, 1918, for a rigid unitary and integral support for mounting parts of an electrical ignition device, held void because of laches in presenting them to the Patent Office. P. 465.
3. The rule that a reissue patent expanding the patentee's original claims will be invalidated by a delay of two years in applying for it unless special circumstance be proven justifying a longer delay is applicable also to patents issued on divisional applications. Chapman v. Wintroath, 252 U. S. 126, explained. P. 264 U. S. 469.
Certiorari to a decree of the circuit court of appeals, in a patent infringement suit, reversing the district court and directing dismissal of the bill.
of Illinois, 255 F. 907, and directing a dismissal of the bill. Three patents were involved. The decision in respect of two of them turned upon the question whether a license contract between the patentees, Henry and Emil Podlesak, and petitioner, had the effect of precluding an assignment of patent rights made by the Podlesaks to respondent. But the petition upon which the writ was granted challenged the decision below only in respect of the third patent, and we are not called upon to consider the contentions now advanced as to the others. Alice State Bank v. Houston Pasture Co., 247 U. S. 240, 247 U. S. 242.
The bill alleges that the Splitdorf Electrical Company had infringed Claims 7 and 8 of Kane patent, 1,280,105, issued September 24, 1918, for a rigid unitary and integral support for mounting the various parts of an electrical ignition device. The original application was filed by Kane February 2, 1910, on which patent No. 1,204,573 was granted November 14, 1916. On October 24, 1914, Kane endeavored to amend his application by introducing six claims copied from Milton's patent, issued May 12, 1914, for the purpose of securing an interference. The amendment was refused, and Kane was directed by the Examiner to file a divisional application if he desired to contest an interference with Milton. This was done. The Webster Company, however, acquired the rights of both Milton and Kane, and through their attorneys conducted the proceedings for both sides in the Patent Office, resulting in an award of priority in favor of Kane.
as already stated, patent issued September 24, 1918, to the petitioner, to whom all rights had been assigned. The original bill was filed in 1915, and Claims 7 and 8 were brought into the suit by a supplemental bill filed October 25, 1918.
originally sought. The repeated assertion of interferences in narrower terms, resulting in delays incident to their determination, affords no just excuse for the failure to assert the broader Claims 7 and 8 at an earlier date. The subject matter of these claims is not of such complicated character that it might not have been readily described in the original application or in one of the subsequent applications -- in 1915, for example -- as it was described in 1918, and the long delay of Kane and his assignee in coming to the point tends strongly to confirm the view that the final determination to do so was an exigent afterthought, rather than a logical development of the original application. We have no hesitation in saying that the delay was unreasonable, and, under the circumstances shown by the record, constitutes laches, by which the petitioner lost whatever rights it might otherwise have been entitled to.
"It follows from this that if, at the date of the issue of the original patent, the patentee had been conscious of the nature and extent of his invention, an inspection of the patent, when issued, and an examination of its terms, made with that reasonable degree of care which is habitual to and expected of men in the management of their own interests in the ordinary affairs of life, would have immediately informed him that the patent had failed fully to cover the area of his invention. And this must be deemed to be notice to him of the fact, for the law imputes knowledge when opportunity and interest, combined with reasonable care, would necessarily impart it."
"Not to improve such opportunity, under the stimulus of self-interest, with reasonable diligence constitutes laches which in equity disables the party who seeks to revive a right which he has allowed to lie unclaimed from enforcing it to the detriment of those who have, in consequence, been led to act as though it were abandoned."
slept upon his rights, and has thus led the public to rely on the implied disclaimer involved in the terms of the original patent, and that, when this is a matter apparent on the face of the instrument, upon a mere comparison of the original patent with the reissue, it is competent for the courts to decide whether the delay was unreasonable and whether the reissue was therefore contrary to law and void."
"This doctrine has been reiterated in many cases since, and at the present term has been reconsidered and emphatically repeated as the settled law in the case of Mahn v. Harwood, 112 U. S. 354, where it is said, by Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the opinion of the Court:"
"We repeat, then, if a patentee has not claimed as much as he is entitled to claim, he is bound to discover the defect in a reasonable time, or he loses all right to a reissue, and if the Commissioner of Patents, after the lapse of such reasonable time, undertakes to grant a reissue for the purpose of correcting the supposed mistake, he exceeds his power, and acts under a mistaken view of the law, and the court, seeing this, has a right, and it is its duty, to declare the reissue pro tanto void, in any suit founded upon it."
"It was also there said that, while no invariable rule can be laid down as to what it reasonable time within which the patentee should seek for the correction of a claim which he considers too narrow, a delay of two years, by analogy to the law of public use before an application for a patent, should be construed equally favorable to the public, and that excuse for any longer delay than that should be made manifest by the special circumstances of the case."
had been infringed, but without infringing the patent as originally granted, an application for a reissue was made and allowed, it was held that the patentee was guilty of laches and the reissue came too late. The doctrine of Wollensak v. Reiher was restated (p. 119 U. S. 662) to the effect that, while no invariable rule can be laid down, a delay of two years, by analogy to the law of public use before an application for a patent, will be fatal unless excuse for a longer delay shall be made manifest by the special circumstances of the case. See also Topliff v. Topliff, 145 U. S. 156; Wollensak v. Sargent, 151 U. S. 221.
"Appellants contend, however, and we agree with the courts that have passed upon the question, that the effect of the holding [in the Wintroath case] is to fix the period during which such application must be filed at two years from the date of the issuance of the other patent. No other deduction can fairly or logically be drawn from the discussion of the question in that opinion."
But Chapman v. Wintroath is not to be so narrowly construed.
"Thus, through all of these statutes runs the time limit of two years for the filing of an application, there is no modification in any of them of the like provision in Rev.Stats. § 4886, as amended, and no distinction is made between an original and a later or a divisional application, with respect to this filing right."
"favored to the extent that, where an invention clearly disclosed in an application . . . is not claimed therein, but is subsequently claimed in another application, the original will be deemed a constructive reduction of the invention to practice and the later one will be given the filing date of the earlier, with all of its priority of right."
Reference is made to Wollensak v. Reiher, supra, and other reissue cases, which, as we have seen, adopt the two-year time limit by analogy to the law of public use before application for patent, and, while it is not said in terms, the plain import of the citation of and reliance upon these cases is that the effect of the two years' delay, as recognized in those cases, may be overcome where it "is accounted for and excused by special circumstances which show it to have been not unreasonable," and, properly understood, there is nothing in the opinion to the contrary.
Our conclusion, therefore, is that, in cases involving laches, equitable estoppel, or intervening private or public rights, the two-year time limit prima facie applies to divisional applications, and can only be avoided by proof of special circumstances justifying a longer delay. In other words, we follow in that respect the analogy furnished by the patent reissue cases.
* See also American Laundry Machinery Co. v. Prosperity Co., Inc., 294 F. 144, reversed by a decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, cited supra.

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