Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/311/211/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 21:49:08+00:00

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Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 311 › Schriber-Schroth Co. v. Cleveland Trust Co.
1. The claims of a patent are interpreted in the light of the specifications, but with reference also to its file-wrapper history. P. 311 U. S. 217.
2. It is a rule of patent construction that a claim in a patent must be read and interpreted with reference to claims that have been cancelled or rejected and the claims allowed cannot, by construction, be read to cover what has thus been eliminated from the patent. P. 311 U. S. 220.
3. While this rule is most frequently invoked when the original and cancelled claim is broader than that allowed, the rule and the reason for it are the same if the cancelled or rejected claim be narrower. P. 311 U. S. 221.
4. The patentee may not, by resort to the doctrine of equivalents, give to an allowed claim a scope which it might have had but for amendments, the cancellation of which amounts to a disclaimer. P. 311 U. S. 221.
the head and skirt portions and supporting two wrist-pin bosses. Assuming that, with the aid of the specification, these claims might be construed to claim flexible webs, devised to act in cooperation with the other elements to make the piston respond to physical compression and thermal expansion, as an element of the combination which they do not claim expressly, such construction is precluded because the patentee, by amendments while his application was pending, made additional claims like those mentioned but specifying flexible webs, and thereafter withdrew them, upon their being rejected in interference proceedings. Pp. 311 U. S. 215, 311 U. S. 222.
Certiorari, 309 U.S. 648, to review a decree sustaining a patent in suits to restrain infringements.
Decision in these cases turns on the question whether, in the light of the patent office history of the Jardine patent on a piston for gas engines, the court below, in construing the specifications and claims, erroneously included one element, "flexible" or "yielding" webs in the patented combination.
pistons for gas engines. It brought suit in the district court for northern Ohio against petitioners, three piston dealers, customers of the Sterling Products Company, to restrain infringement of five of the patents, including the Gulick patent No. 1,815,733, applied for November 30, 1917, and allowed July 31, 1931, the Jardine patent, No. 1,763,523, applied for March 11, 1920, and allowed June 10, 1930, and the Maynard patent No. 1,655,968, applied for January 3, 1921, and allowed June 10, 1928.
The cases were consolidated and tried before a special master who, upon the basis of elaborate special findings, concluded that the Gulick patent was invalid because of want of invention and because of the addition to the application by amendment in 1922 of a new element of the alleged invention; that the Maynard patent was invalid for want of invention and for failure to describe and claim the alleged invention, and that the Jardine patent was invalid as not showing invention over the prior art exhibited by Ricardo, Franquist, and Long. He held the other patents invalid for reasons not now material.
"A piston for an engine cylinder comprising a skirt, a head separated from the skirt wall around its entire periphery, said skirt being longitudinally split to render the skirt wall yieldable on every diameter in response to cylinder wall pressure, wrist pin bosses, and means rigidly connecting said bosses to the head and yieldingly connecting said bosses to the skirt whereby said skirt is yieldable in response to cylinder wall pressure."
rendered yieldable during operation in response to cylinder wall pressure" appears in number 18, one of the sustained claims.
The court of appeals found invention in both the Gulick and Maynard patents, in a combination of elements of which one was "webs laterally flexible," which was not specifically described or claimed in the Gulick patent before its amendment of 1922 and was never so described or claimed in the Maynard patent.
"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, "
Permutit Co. v. Graver Corp., 284 U. S. 52, 284 U. S. 60; that consequently the patent monopoly did not extend beyond the invention described and explained by the patent, as the statute requires, and could not be enlarged by amendment so as to embrace in the invention and element not described or claimed in the application as filed, at least when adverse rights of the public had intervened. See Schriber-Schroth Co. v. Cleveland Trust Co., supra, 305 U. S. 57.
Upon the remand, the court of appeals held in the present suit, Cleveland Trust Co. v. Schriber-Schroth Co., 108 F.2d 109, that the elements of the combination described and claimed in the Gulick patent before amendment and in the Maynard patent without including the flexible web element which was added only by amendment to the Gulick patent, did not disclose invention over the prior art. But, considering that the flexible web element which had not been included in the combination patented by Gulick and Maynard had been described and claimed in the Jardine patent, it recalled its mandate to the district court by which it had directed dismissal without prejudice of the suit brought on that patent. See Cleveland Trust Co. v. Schriber-Schroth Co., supra, 108 F.2d 112, 113. Upon an examination of the Jardine specifications and claims, it found there described and claimed the invention which it had previously found in Gulick and Maynard, but which this Court had found the patentees had failed to describe and claim in their applications.
"I have found that these difficulties can be overcome by constructing a piston with its skirt or guide portion supported and slotted or divided in a manner to permit deformation and deflection of parts thereof without interfering with the performance of the essential functions of the respective parts."
Reading specifications and claims together, the Court of Appeals interpreted the latter as incorporating the element of web flexibility in the combination claimed, and concluded that Jardine had explained and claimed "the principle of operation of his machine and the flexibility of its webs." It said that "the knowledge that was not Gulick's, or was by him concealed, is clear to Jardine, and by him proclaimed." It held the Jardine patent valid and infringed, as it had found Gulick infringed in its earlier decision.
ascertained from an inspection of the specifications and claims of the patent alone. Where the patentee, in the course of his application in the patent office, has, by amendment, cancelled or surrendered claims, those which are allowed are to be read in the light of those abandoned and an abandoned claim cannot be revived and restored to the patent by reading it by construction into the claims which are allowed. Hence, petitioners argue, the effect to be given to the omission from the Jardine claims of any reference to the flexible web feature, which the court below thought distinguished his alleged invention from that of the Gulick and Maynard patents, cannot rightly be determined without some examination of the claims pointing to flexible webs as a feature of his invention, which Jardine added to his application by amendment and later surrendered as a result of interference proceedings in the patent office.
of said webs and separated from the ring flange by circumferential slits and provided with a longitudinal slit disposed between the ends of the webs."
Claims 5 and 6 refer to the "skirt portion cut away from the head to expose the bosses."
"In a piston of the class described, a cup-like head comprising a pressure receiving end and a wall portion, a skirt, circumferentially disconnected from the wall portion of the head and divided from end to end, and skirt carriers connecting said skirt to the pressure receiving end, said skirt carriers being disconnected from the wall portion of the head and susceptible of being slightly flexed radially."
head and connected with the head by ribs, webs, or skirt carriers. The only material difference in view of what has been said to be the invention is the statement in the withdrawn claims that the skirt carriers (webs) are "susceptible of being slightly flexed radially" or the like. Whatever would have been the proper construction of the claims as allowed, read in the light of the specifications alone, there being no amendments, the question now presented is whether, in view of the amendments and their withdrawal, the patent can rightly be construed as including the flexible webs in the claim allowed.
In addition to the fact of the cancellation of the only claims specifying flexing webs or their equivalents as a feature of the invention, it is to be noted that at no time during the prosecution of the Jardine application did he urge that he was the inventor of a piston having flexible webs. Before the interferences and in distinguishing his invention from the Ricardo piston, Jardine urged as his only advance over Ricardo the addition of the slotted skirt which "changes the structure and the resistance to a disposal of the forces within and without the piston when the piston is in use," although, in this litigation, it is contended that the Ricardo patent did not disclose flexing webs. In submitting the final amendment cancelling the flexible web claims in interference and presenting the claims 8 and 11 of the Jardine patent held valid by the court below, there is no mention of flexing webs, the features stressed being in the case of Claim 8 that the webs are integral with the ring flange and in the case of Claim 11 that the webs are integral with the flange and extend "convergingly inwardly" therefrom.
the patent. Shepard v. Carrigan, 116 U. S. 593; Sutter v. Robinson, 119 U. S. 530; Roemer v. Peddie, 132 U. S. 313; Phoenix Caster Co. v. Spiegel, 133 U. S. 360; Hubbell v. United States, 179 U. S. 77; Weber Electric Co. v. E. H. Freeman Electric Co., 256 U. S. 668; I.T.S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Co., 272 U. S. 429, 272 U. S. 443. The patentee may not, by resort to the doctrine of equivalents, give to an allowed claim a scope which it might have had without the amendments, the cancellation of which amounts to a disclaimer. Smith v. Magic City Club, 282 U. S. 784, 282 U. S. 790; Weber Electric Co. v. E.H. Freeman Electric Co., supra, 256 U. S. 677-678; I.T.S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Co., supra, 272 U. S. 444. The injurious consequences to the public and to inventors and patent applicants if patentees were thus permitted to revive cancelled or rejected claims and restore them to their patents are manifest. See Leggett v. Avery, 101 U. S. 256, 101 U. S. 259.
True, the rule is most frequently invoked when the original and cancelled claim is broader than that allowed, but the rule and the reason for it are the same if the cancelled or rejected claim be narrower. Morgan Envelope Co. v. Albany Paper Co., 152 U. S. 425, 152 U. S. 429; Wm. B. Scaife & Sons Co. v. Falls City Woolen Mills Co., 209 F. 210, 213; see Computing Scale Co. v. Automatic Scale Co., 204 U. S. 609, 204 U. S. 620-621; cf., in case of disclaimer, Altoona Publix Theaters v. Tri-Ergon Corp., 294 U. S. 477, 294 U. S. 492-493.
claims as equivalent to them. Morgan Envelope Co. v. Albany Paper Co., supra.
"a combination with balanced skirt flexibility due to cooperation of longitudinal and vertical slotting with flexing webs supporting retracted bosses and connected to a skirt thereby made responsive to physical compression and thermal expansion so as to permit of minute clearances between piston and cylinder, a concept perceived in Gulick as amended and minus amendment no longer perceived."
the alleged invention, the latter cannot be construed as including that feature.
"It discloses no web flexibility cooperating with other elements of resiliency to achieve the balanced flexibility perceived in Jardine on the basis of which alone the latter is thought to be valid. . . ."
We accept this conclusion as supported by the evidence of the prior art in the master's findings and the only one which could be reached consistently with the decision below with respect to the Gulick and Maynard patents which stand adjudged as invalid.
MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS and MR. JUSTICE ROBERTS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
* Together with No. 10, Aberdeen Motor Supply Co. v. Cleveland Trust Co., et al., and No. 11, F.E. Rowe Sales Co. v. Cleveland Trust Co., et al., also on writs of certiorari, 309 U.S. 648, to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The Chrysler Corporation was joined as a party plaintiff in the original suits, and is a nominal respondent here.
"The webs 6 and guide segments preferably are so designed that this displacement of the segments 10, 10a, is permitted by virtue of a bending of the webs 6 at points remote from the guide segments. To this end, as shown in Fig. 4, the thickness of the guide segments is increased toward the webs 6 and the webs 6 are decreased in thickness from the guide portions inward toward the bosses to points in line with the inner ends of the slots 11a. This gives, in effect, a cantilever structure weakest at its support. . . . Thus, the reaction force of the cylinder wall on the outer faces of the guide segments as the piston expands tends to cause bending of the webs 6 along said lines 13. Due to the bending of the web sections 6 and the forcing together of each pair of segments, the guide part of the piston may undergo a considerable thermal expansion without a corresponding increase in the outer diameter thereof, and thus a small initial clearance can be used without danger of scoring or seizure of the piston."
A question raised by the petition for certiorari was whether respondent could prosecute its suit for injunction in the absence, as a party, of the licensee to whom respondent had granted the exclusive right to manufacture, under the patents in question, aluminum pistons, the only field in which concededly the patent has present practical utility. The special master found against petitioners on this point, and no exceptions were taken to his finding, nor was the point argued when the case was first before the circuit court of appeals and this Court. The court below thought that, in view of these circumstances, the right of respondents to an injunction was no longer an issue. We do not here pass on the question, since we find that, in any case, for reasons appearing in the opinion, no injunction should issue.

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