Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/304/364.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 00:56:39+00:00

Document:
GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. WABASH APPLIANCE CORP.
[304 U.S. 364, 365] Messrs. Merrell E. Clark and Hubert Howson, both of New York City, for petitioner.
Mr. Samuel E. Darby, Jr., of New York City, for respondents.
Petitioner, General Electric Company, brought this patent infringement suit based on Pacz patent, No. 1,410,499, relating to a tungsten filament for incandescent lamps. The patent, issued March 21, 1922, on an application filed February 20, 1917, contains process and product claims; only the latter are here involved. The District Court for Eastern New York held claims 25, 26, and 27 valid and infringed, and gave petitioner a decree for an injunction and accounting. 17 F.Supp. 901. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that petitioner's product was anticipated by filament produced under the teachings of the Coolidge patent, No. 1,082,933, and reversed with directions to dismiss the bill of complaint. 91 F.2d 904. This decision conflicted with that handed down by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Anraku v. General Electric Co., 80 F.2d 958, which held [304 U.S. 364, 366] the same claims valid and infringed. To resolve the conflict, this Court granted certiorari. 302 U.S. 676 , 58 S.Ct. 143, 82 L.Ed. --.
In incandescent lamps, the tungsten filament, through which the electric current passes, grows more luminous than the carbon filament of the early days of the art. There were faults of 'offsetting' and 'sagging,' however, affecting the efficiency of the first tungsten filaments. 'Offsetting' occurs when, during heating in the use of the lamp, the filament forms crystals which extend their boundaries across the entire diameter of the filament, substantially perpendicular to its axis. The crystals in the filament thus come to have an appearance, somewhat analogous to the joints in a bamboo rod. Lateral slipping of the crystals reduces the cross-sectional area at the point of contact of the crystals with the result that the temperature at that point is increased, thus hastening the burnout, and the filament is weakened. 'Sagging' is a change of position by the filament during incandescence. It elongates and thus is forced out of the plane it occupied between fixed supports. Sagging has many objections. The sagging filament may touch the glass and end the life of the lamp. In gas-filled lamps, when sagging causes the coils to spread apart, the gas flows in between the coils and unduly cools the filament. Combatting sagging by additional supports is also said to cool the filament, and reduce electrical efficiency.
'When the meta r eaches the temperature at which extensive grain growth would ordinarily take place, the presence of this material intimately associated with the tungsten particles has a marked effect on the shape and size of the tungsten grains. The ingot of tungsten thus produced, whether it be due to the fact that the grains have not reached the equilibrium grain size or to other causes, is particularly susceptible to grain growth during subsequent heat treatments.
We need not inquire whether Pacz exhibited invention, or whether his product was anticipated. The claim is invalid on its face. It fails to make a disclosure sufficiently definite to satisfy the requirements of R.S . 4888, 35 U.S.C. 33, 35 U.S.C.A. 33. That section requires that an applicant for a patent file a written description of his discovery or invention 'in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains ... to make, construct, compound, and use the same; ... and he shall particularly point out and distinctly claim the part, improvement, or combination which he claims as his invention or discovery.' We may assume that Pacz has sufficiently informed those skilled in the art how to make and use his filament. The statute has another command. Recognizing that most inventions represent improvements on some existing article, process, or machine, and that a description of the [304 U.S. 364, 369] invention must in large part set out what is old in order to facilitate the understanding of what is new, Congress requires of the applicant 'a distinct and specific statement of what he claims to be new, and to be his invention.' 2 Patents, whether basic or for improvements, must comply accurately and precisely with the statutory requirement as to claims of invention or discovery. The limits of a paen t must be known for the protection of the patentee, the encouragement of the inventive genius of others, and the assurance that the subject of the patent will be dedicated ultimately to the public. 3 The statute seeks to guard against unreasonable advantages to the patentee and disadvantages to others arising from uncertainty as to their rights. 4 The inventor must 'inform the public during the life of the patent of the limits of the monopoly asserted, so that it may be known which features may be safely used or manufactured without a license and which may not.' 5 The claims 'measure the invention.' 6 Patentees may reasonably anticipate that claimed inventions, improvements, and discoveries, turning on points so refined as the granular structure of products, require precise descriptions of the new characteristic for which protection is sought. In a limited field the variant must be clearly defined. This was one in a series of patents. United States v. General Electric Co., 272 U.S. 476, 480 , 47 S.Ct. 192.
The Circuit Court of Appeals below suggested that 'In view of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of describing adequately a number of microscopic and heterogeneous shapes of crystals, it may be that Pacz made the best disclosure possible ....' Page 905 of 91 F.2d. But Congress requires, for the protection of the public, that the inventor set out a definite limitation of his patent; that condition must be satisfied before the monopoly is granted. 13 The difficulty of making adequate description may have some bearing on the sufficiency of the description attempted, but it cannot justify a claim describing nothing new except per- [304 U.S. 364, 373] haps in functional terms. It may be doubted whether one who discovers or invents a product be knows to be new will ever find it impossible to describe some aspect of its novelty.
Finally, the product claims may not be saved by a limitation to products produced in accordance with the process set out in the specification. This construction, though possibly of no avail against respondent, might add to the protection afforded petitioner by the process claims, if they are valid, in view of its application to filaments produced abroad. But putting aside questions as to the general propriety of such a construction,18 unless the claim uses language explicitly referring to the method of preparation, or describing the product in phrases suggestive of that process,19 to save the product claim in this fashion would constitute an improper importation into the claim of a factor nowhere described there. 20 The claims in suit seek to monopolize the product however created, and may not be reworded, in an effort to establish [304 U.S. 364, 375] their validity, to cover only the products of the process described in the specification, or its equivalent.
For reasons set out, claims 25, 26, 27 are invalid. The judgment is affirmed.
[ Footnote 1 ] '26. A drawn filament for electric incandescent lamps or other devices, composed substantially of tungsten and made up mainly of a number of comparatively large grains of such size and contour as to prevent substantial sagging and offsetting during a normal or commercially useful life for such a lamp or other device.
[ Footnote 2 ] Merrill v. Yeomans, 94 U.S. 568 , 570.
[ Footnote 3 ] Cf. The Incandescent Lamp Patent, 159 U.S. 465 , 474ff, 16 S.Ct. 75.
[ Footnote 4 ] See Brooks v. Fiske, 15 How. 212, 215.
[ Footnote 5 ] Permutit Co. v. Graver Corporation, 284 U.S. 52, 60 , 52 S.Ct. 53, 55; Grant v. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218, 247.
[ Footnote 6 ] Continental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co., 210 U.S. 405, 419 , 28 S.Ct. 748, 751.
[ Footnote 7 ] 'When this crystallization becomes excessive the crystals may, in the case of a filament, become so large as to extend across the entire section of the filament and thereupon the sections may move laterally upon each other and produce the condition known as 'offsetting.' I shall hereinafter describe more in detail the special method which I employ for minimizing the loss in ductility and for preventing this offsetting effect.' Coolidge patent, No. 1,082,933.
'Such crystals seem to increase in size in much the same manner as crystals formed in liquid solutions, and, if the crystals become large enough to extend almost or entirely across the filament, adjacent crystals tend to slip along their cleavage planes thereby giving the filament the offset or faulted appearance above referred to.' Myers and Hall patent, No. 1,363,162.
[ Footnote 8 ] Holland Furniture Co. v. Perkins Glue Co., 277 U.S. 245 , 256-258, 48 S.Ct. 474, 478, 479, and cases cited.
[ Footnote 9 ] 277 U.S. at page 258, 48 S.Ct. at page 479.
'28. A coiled filament composed substantially of tungsten and capable of use in an electric incandescent lamp without either substantial sagging or offsetting during a normal or commercially useful life.
[ Footnote 11 ] See Gynex Corporation v. Dilex Institute, 2 Cir., 85 F.2d 103, 105; Davis Co. v. New Departure Co., 6 Cir., 217 F. 775, at page 782.
[ Footnote 12 ] There is no showing whether, under established principles in the science, the language indicated grains extending across the width of filament, and if so whether the boundaries were irregular, or regular but not perpendicular to the axis of the filament; or whether the language indicated grains larger than the fine grains of Coolidge's thoriated filament but not large enough to extend across the entire section, and if so what type of boundaries existed.
Indeed, those merely skilled might have suspected the absence of crystals large enough to extend across the entire section of the filament, in view of the efforts of other patentees to avoid such crystals (Coolidge, No. 1,082,933, p. 2, 1. 13; Myers and Hall, No. 1,363,162, p. 1, 1. 56), and in view of the 'common knowledge in the art that where grain boundaries, large enough to extend across the filament, were produced, there would be bound to be slippage' (17 F.Supp. 901, at page 903); yet those are the crystals found in respondent's lamps.
[ Footnote 14 ] Compare Mitchell v. Tilghman, 19 Wall. 287, 391; Westinghouse v. Boyden Power Brake Co., 170 U.S. 537, 557 , 558 S., 18 S.Ct. 707.
[ Footnote 15 ] Compare Holland Furniture Co. v. Perkins Glue Co., 277 U.S. 245 , at page 255, 48 S.Ct. 474, at page 478, with United States Repair & Guarantee Co. v. Assyrian Asphalt Co., 183 U.S. 591 , at pages 600, 601, 22 S.Ct. 87.
[ Footnote 16 ] Cf. Dunn Wire-Cut Lug Brick Co. v. Toronto Fire Clay Co., 6 Cir., 259 F. 258, 261; Trussell Mfg. Co. v. Wilson-Jones Co., 2 Cir., 50 F.2d 1027, 1029.
[ Footnote 17 ] Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, 111 U.S. 293, 310 , 4 S. Ct. 455. See, also, Hide-Ite Leather Co. v. Fiber Products Co., 1 Cir., 226 F. 34, 36; cf. Maurer v. Dickerson, 3 Cir., 113 F.2d 870, 874.
[ Footnote 18 ] Steinfur Patents Corporation v. William Beyer, Inc., 2 Cir., 62 F. 2d 238, 241; Buono v. Yankee Maid Dress Corporation, 2 Cir., 77 F.2d 274, 279; Dunn Wire-Cut Lug Brick Co. v. Toronto Fire Clay Co., 6 Cir., 259 F. 258, 261, 262.
[ Footnote 19 ] Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., 93 U.S. 486 ; Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, 111 U.S. 293, 310 , 4 S.Ct. 455 P lummer v. Sargent, 120 U.S. 442, 448 , 7 S.Ct. 640; Downes v. Teter-Heany Development Co., 3 Cir., 150 F. 122; Hide-Ite Leather Co. v. Fiber Products Co., 1 Cir., 226 F. 34.
[ Footnote 20 ] Compare McCarty v. Lehigh Valley R. Co., 160 U.S. 110, 116 , 16 S. Ct. 240; Altoona Publix Theatres v. American Tri-Ergon Corporation, 294 U.S. 477, 487 , 55 S.Ct. 455, 459.

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