Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/371/231/89481/
Timestamp: 2020-01-28 19:27:17
Document Index: 424366123

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 103', '§ 103', '§ 282', '§ 103', '§ 106', '§ 125', '§ 106']

T. P. Laboratories, Inc., Plaintiff-appellant, v. Gerald W. Huge, Defendant-appellee, 371 F.2d 231 (7th Cir. 1966) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Seventh Circuit › 1966 › T. P. Laboratories, Inc., Plaintiff-appellant, v. Gerald W. Huge, Defendant-appellee
T. P. Laboratories, Inc., Plaintiff-appellant, v. Gerald W. Huge, Defendant-appellee, 371 F.2d 231 (7th Cir. 1966)
US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit - 371 F.2d 231 (7th Cir. 1966) November 28, 1966
Obviousness is governed by Section 103 of the Patent Act providing that a patent may not be obtained "if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art" (35 U.S.C. § 103). This provision was most recently considered by the Supreme Court in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 86 S. Ct. 684, 15 L. Ed. 2d 545. There it was concluded that the Section was merely a codification of judicial precedents (at p. 17, 86 S. Ct. at p. 693). The legislative history showed that Congress did not intend an invention to be patentable "if the difference between the new thing and what was known before is not considered sufficiently great" (at p. 14, 86 S. Ct. at p. 692). The Court described the basic factual inquiries to be made under Section 103 as follows (at p. 17, 86 S. Ct. at p. 694):
In concluding that the plaintiff's inventions were obvious within the meaning of Section 103 of the Patent Act (35 U.S.C. § 103), the District Court relied upon the 1867, 1926 and 1932 articles just described. In addition, the District Court relied upon the Sugatt, Remensnyder and Maker patents, issuing between 1900 and 1928, as disclosing devices very similar to the plaintiff's. We agree that the prior art described in those articles and patents was sufficient to sustain the defense of obviousness. As in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, at p. 36, 86 S. Ct. 684, at p. 703, Kesling's method and positioner inventions "rest [s] upon exceedingly small and quite non-technical mechanical differences in a device which was old in the art" and are therefore not patentable. They are merely an obvious modification of the prior art.
Plaintiff of course relies upon the presumption of validity that is accorded to patents by virtue of Section 282 of the Patent Code (35 U.S.C. § 282). The presumption of validity of a patent does not exist as against evidence of prior art not before the Patent Office (Hobbs v. Wisconsin Power & Light Co., 250 F.2d 100, 105 (7th Cir. 1957)), certiorari denied, 356 U.S. 932, 78 S. Ct. 774, 2 L. Ed. 2d 762, and even one prior art reference not considered by the Patent Office can suffice to overthrow this presumption. Simmons Company v. Hill-Rom Company, 352 F.2d 886, 888 (7th Cir. 1965); Jaybee Manufacturing Corp. v. Ajax Hardware Manufacturing Corp., 287 F.2d 228, 229 (9th Cir. 1961). Here the Maker patent, which differed somewhat from Remensnyder, was not cited and one of its purposes was to correct dental articulation. The Sugatt patent was not cited in the positioner patent application. Only Remensnyder was cited during the Patent Office proceedings on both patents. The positioner patent had been rejected by the examiner, and Remensnyder was the sole reference on appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals that reversed the examiner. As the trial court noted, even though both Sugatt and Remensnyder were of record in the prosecution of the method patent, the teaching found in Dr. Herder's 1926 article was not before the Patent Office, so that the examiner, who allowed the method patent, was unable to appreciate the significance of Sugatt and Remensnyder. Furthermore, the four key learned articles had evidently not been considered in the Patent Office in connection with Dr. Kesling's claims.
Plaintiff asserts that it took Dr. Kesling many hours during three years to develop this tooth positioner but, as Judge Learned Hand pointed out in Picard v. United Aircraft Corporation, 128 F.2d 632, 636 (2nd Cir. 1942), certiorari denied, 317 U.S. 651, 63 S. Ct. 46, 87 L. Ed. 524, "slow but inevitable progress of an industry through trial and error * * [and] persistent and intelligent search for improvement" are insufficient to support a patent. Also, as defendant has noted, if Dr. Kesling had been more familiar with the prior art, much less time would have been needed in developing the positioner.
In Zegers v. Zegers, Inc., 365 F.2d 156 (7th Cir. 1966), certiorari denied, 87 S. Ct. 320, this Court held that providing slots in flanged weather strip to receive the hooks of clips secured to window frames would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. Similarly here, we conclude that dissecting these teeth on the model and resetting them to preferred positions under Kesling's method would be obvious to anyone with ordinary skill in orthodontia in the light of the prior art. As pointed out in Zegers, Section 103 of the Patent Act (35 U.S.C. § 103) is to be applied to reward "only genuine contributions to the useful knowledge of an art," so that mere adaptations or manipulations must be denied the grant of a legal monopoly (365 F.2d at p. 159). Here too, the only differences between Dr. Kesling's device and those described above were adaptations or manipulations of what had been revealed by the prior art.
Plaintiff also argues that the longfelt need and commercial success of these patents and the failure of others to produce the inventions earlier demonstrate that the Kesling inventions were not obvious. Such secondary factors may sometimes tip the scales toward patentability,5 but they have little weight here where "the limited claims of the * * * patent [s] are clearly evident from the prior art as it stood at the time of the invention." Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. at p. 36, 86 S. Ct. at p. 703; see also 2 Deller's Walker on Patents (2d ed. 1964) § 106, p. 75. At any rate, as in Hobbs v. Wisconsin Power & Light Company, 250 F.2d 100, 105 (7th Cir. 1957), certiorari denied, 356 U.S. 932, 78 S. Ct. 774, 2 L. Ed. 2d 762, these objective considerations are "not persuasive or impressive if the record is examined closely." Thus despite plaintiff's claim of longfelt need for tooth positioners, devices similar to plaintiff's that moved teeth to more correct positions had been known as early as 1867 when Dr. Burgh described his positioner. Then came Sugatt's in 1900 and Dr. Herbst's in 1932. These devices also disprove plaintiff's assertion that others had failed to produce satisfactory positioners earlier. There was no proof that other orthodontic devices had been displaced by plaintiff's.
With respect to commercial success, the record is devoid of industry-wide statistics. We agree with the District Court's conclusion that the commercial success of this tooth positioner resulted largely from Dr. Kesling's extensive promotional efforts. Success due to a patentee's business ability in exploiting and advertising does not establish patentability. McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U.S. 419, 428, 12 S. Ct. 76, 35 L. Ed. 800; Morrison v. Coe, 74 App.D.C. 335, 122 F.2d 793, 794 (D.C. Cir. 1941); 2 Deller's Walker on Patents (2d ed. 1964) § 125, p. 321. As Mr. Justice Jackson said in Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 153, 71 S. Ct. 127, 130, 95 L. Ed. 162, "commercial success without invention will not make patentability".
Plaintiff cites Amp Incorporated v. Vaco Products Co., 280 F.2d 518 (7th Cir. 1960), certiorari denied, 364 U.S. 921, 81 S. Ct. 286, 5 L. Ed. 2d 260, in an effort to avoid Section 103 of the Patent Act, but there the District Court had relied only on one previous patent to show the prior art (at p. 521). Here three earlier patents, the Gunning splint and three articles were discussed in the opinion below in considering prior art. In urging validity, plaintiff also cites McKee Door Company v. Forest Door Company, 284 F.2d 809 (7th Cir. 1960), but McKee had "afforded a remedy for defects in doors of this type and solved the foregoing problems which had confronted the overhead door industry for many years and produced new and beneficial results never before obtained" (at p. 811). In contrast, before Dr. Kesling developed his device, there were other similar devices that straightened or moved teeth. The principal variance between them and this tooth positioner involved the dissecting of teeth from the model and moving them to preselected positions. This was not enough to constitute invention, especially since the idea of dissection and rearrangement of teeth from a model was suggested in Dr. Herbst's 1932 article. Without resort to the expediency of hindsight, Kesling's was only a limited advance obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
See Note, "Subtests of `Nonobviousness'", 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1169, 1172, 1175, 1181 (1964). See also 2 Deller's Walker on Patents (2d ed. 1964) § 106, p. 75