Source: https://lexroll.com/289-u-s-178/
Timestamp: 2018-02-26 03:23:06
Document Index: 558986144

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 12', '§ 45', '§ 841', '§ 45', '§ 312', '§ 276']

289 U.S. 178 | LexRoll.com
U.S. Supreme Court Opinions > 1933 > 289 U.S. 178
77 L.Ed. 1114
DUBILIER CONDENSER CORPORATION.
Dunmore and Lowell were employed in the radio section and engaged in research and testing in the laboratory. In the outlines of laboratory work the subject of ‘airplane radio’ was assigned to the group of which Dunmore was chief and Lowell a member. The subject of ‘radio receiving sets’ was assigned to a group of which J. L. Preston was chief, but to which neither Lowell nor Dunmore belonged.
In May, 1921, the Air Corps of the Army and the Bureau of Standards entered into an arrangement whereby the latter undertook the prosecution of forty-four research projects for the benefit of the Air Corps. To pay the cost of such work, the Corps transferred and allocated to the Bureau the sum of $267,500. Projects Nos. 37 to 42, inclusive, relating to the use of radio in connection with aircraft, were assigned to the radio section and $25,000 was allocated to pay the cost of the work. Project No. 38 was styled ‘visual indicator for radio signals,’ and suggested the construction of a modification of what was known as an ‘Eckhart recorder.’ Project No. 42 was styled ‘airship bomb control and marine torpedo control.’ Both were problems of design merely.
In the summer of 1921 Dunmore, as chief of the group to which ‘airplane radio’ problems had been assigned, without further instructions from his superiors, picked out for himself one of these navy problems, that of operating a relay for remote control of bombs on airships and torpedoes in the sea, ‘as one of particular interest and having perhaps a rather easy solution, and worked on it.’ In September he solved it.
They also conceived the idea of energizing a dynamic type of loud speaker from an alternating current house-lighting circuit and reduced the invention to practice on January 25, 1922. March 21, 1922, they filed an application for a ‘power amplifier.’ The conception embodied in this patent was devised by the patentees without suggestion, instruction, or assignment from any superior.
The respondent concedes that the United States may practice the inventions without payment of royalty, but asserts that all others are excluded, during the life of the patents, from using them without the respondent’s consent. The petitioner insists that the circumstances require a declaration either that the government has sole and exclusive property in the inventions or that they have been dedicated to the public so that anyone may use them.
Though often so characterized a patent is not, accurately speaking, a monopoly, for it is not created by the executive authority at the expense and to the prejudice of all the community except the grantee of the patent. Seymour v. Osborne, 11 Wall. 516, 533, 20 L.Ed. 33. The term ‘monopoly’ connotes the giving of an exclusive privilege for buying, selling, working, or using a thing which the public freely enjoyed prior to the grant.6 Thus a monopoly takes something from the people. An inventor deprives the public of nothing which it enjoyed before his discovery, but gives something of value to the community by adding to the sum of human knowledge. United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 167 U.S. 224, 239, 17 S.Ct. 809, 42 L.Ed. 144; Paper Bag Patent Case, 210 U.S. 405, 424, 28 S.Ct. 748, 52 L.Ed. 1122; Brooks v. Jenkins, 3 McLean, 432, 437, Fed. Cas. No. 1,953; Parker v. Haworth, 4 McLean, 370, 372, Fed. Cas. No. 10,738; Allen v. Hunter, 6 McLean, 303, 305, 306, Fed. Cas. No. 225; Attorney General v. Rumford Chemical Works, 2 Bann. & Ard. 298, 302. He may keep his invention secret and reap its fruits indefinitely. In consideration of its disclosure and the consequent benefit to the community, the patent is granted. An exclusive enjoyment is guaranteed him for seventeen years, but, upon the expiration of that period, the knowledge of the invention inures to the people, who are thus enabled without restriction to practice it and profit by its use. Kendall v. Sinsor, 21 How. 322, 327, 16 L.Ed. 165; United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., supra, page 239 of 167 U.S., 17 S.Ct. 809. To this end the law requires such disclosure to be made in the application for patent that others skilled in the art may understand the invention and how to put it to use.7
‘But a manufacturing corporation which has employed a skilled workman, for a stated compensation, to take charge of its works, and to devote his time and services to devising and making improvements in articles there manufactured, is not entitled to a conveyance of patents obtained for inventions made by him while so employed, in the absence of express agreement to that effect.’
Though the mental concept is embodied or realized in a mechanism or a physical or chemical aggregate, the embodiment is not the invention and is not the subject of a patent. This distinction between the idea and its application in practice is the basis of the rule that employment merely to design or to construct or to devise methods of manufacture is not the same as employment to invent. Recognition of the nature of the act of invention also defines the limits of the so-called shop right, which, shortly stated, is that, where a servant, during his hours of employment, working with his master’s materials and appliances, conceives and perfects an invention for which he obtains a patent, he must accord his master a nonexclusive right to practice the invention. McClurg v. Kigsland, 1 How, 202, 11 L.Ed. 102; Solomons v. United States, 137 U.S. 342, 11 S.Ct. 88, 34 L.Ed. 667; Lane & Bodley Co. v. Locke, 150 U.S. 193, 14 S.Ct. 78, 37 L.Ed. 1049. This is an application of equitable principles. Since the servant uses his master’s time, facilities, and materials to attain a concrete result, the latter is in equity entitled to use that which embodies his own property and to duplicate it as often as he may find occasion to employ similar appliances in his business. But the employer in such a case has no equity to demand a conveyance of the invention, which is the original conception of the employee alone, in which the employer had no part. This remains the property of him who conceived it, together with the right conferred by the patent, to exclude all others than the employer from the accruing benefits. These principles are settled as respects private employment.
‘If an officer in the military service, not specially employed to make experiments with a view to suggest improvements, devises a new and valuable improvement in arms, tents, or any other kind of war material, he is entitled to the benefit of it, and to letters-patent for the improvement from the United States, equally with any other citizen not engaged in such service; and the government cannot, after the patent is issued, make use of the improvement any more than a private individual, without license of the inventor or making compensation to him.’
‘It was at one time somewhat doubted whether the government might not be entitled to the use and benefit of every patented invention, by analogy to the English law, which reserves this right to the crown. But that notion no longer exists. It was ignored in the Case of Burns.’
‘The government has no more power to appropriate a man’s property invested in a patent than it has to take his property invested in real estate; nor does the mere fact that an inventor is, at the time of his invention, in the employ of the government transfer to it any title to or interest therein. An employee, performing all the duties assigned to him in his department of service, may exercise his inventive faculties in any direction he chooses, with the assurance that whatever invention he may thus conceive, and perfect is his individual property. There is no difference between the government and any other employer in this respect.’
‘There is no doubt whatever of the proposition laid down in Solomons’ Case, that the mere fact that a person is in the employ of the government does not preclude him from making improvements in the machines with which he is connected, and obtaining patents therefor, as his individual property; and that in such case the government would have no more right to seize upon and appropriate such property than any other proprietor would have. * * *’
A similar ruling was made with respect to an ensign who obtained a patent for improvements in ‘B.L.R. ordnance’ and who offered to sell the improvements, or the right to use them, to the government. It was held that the Navy might properly make a contract with him to this end.10
Third. When the United States filed its bills, it recognized the law as heretofore declared; realized that it must like any other employer, if it desired an assignment of the respondent’s rights, prove a contractual obligation on the part of Lowell and Dunmore to assign the patents to the government. The averments clearly disclose this. The bill in No. 316 is typical. After reciting that the employees were laboratory apprentice and associate physicist and laboratory assistant and associate physicist respectively, and that one of their duties was ‘to carry on investigation research and experimentation in such problems relating to radio and wireless as might be assigned to them by their superiors,’ it is charged ‘in the course of his employment as aforesaid, there was assigned to said Lowell by his superiors in said radio section, for investigation and research, the problem of developing a radio receiving set capable of operation by alternating current. * * *’
The government is consequently driven to the contention that, though the employees were not specifically assigned the task of making the inventions (as in Standard Parts Co. v. Peck, supra), still, as the discoveries were ‘within the general field of their research and inventive work’ the United States is entitled to an assignment of the patents. The courts below expressly found that Dunmore and Lowell did not agree to exercise their inventive faculties in their work and that invention was not within its scope. In this connection it is to be remembered that the written evidence of their employment does not mention research, much less invention; that never was there a word said to either of them, prior to their discoveries, concerning invention or patents or their duties or obligations respecting these matters; that, as shown by the records of the Patent Office, employees of the Bureau of Standards and other departments had while so employed received numerous patents and enjoyed the exclusive rights obtained as against all private persons without let or hindrance from the government.11 In no proper sense may it be said that the contract of employment contemplated invention; everything that Dunmore and Lowell knew negatived the theory that they were employed to invent; they knew, on the contrary, that the past and then present practice was that the employees of the Bureau were allowed to take patents on their inventions and have the benefits thereby conferred save as to use by the United States. The circumstances preclude the implication of any agreement to assign their inventions or patents.
The trust cannot be express. Every fact in the case negatives the existence of one. Nor can it arise ex maleficio. The employees’ conduct was not fraudulent in any respect. They promptly disclosed their inventions. Their superiors encouraged them to proceed in perfecting and applying the discoveries. Their notebooks and reports disclosed the work they were doing, and there is not a syllable to suggest their use of time or material was clandestine or improper. No word was spoken regarding any claim of title by the government until after applications for patents were filed. And, as we have seen, no such trust has been spelled out of the relation of master and servant, even in the cases where the employee has perfected his invention by the use of his employer’s time and materials. The cases recognizing the doctrine of shop rights may be said to fix a trust upon the employee in favor of his master as respects the use of the invention by the latter, but they do not affect the title to the patent and the exclusive rights conferred by it against the public.
The government’s position in reality is, and must be, that a public policy, to be declared by a court, forbids one employed by the United States, for scientific research, to obtain a patent for what he invents, though neither the Constitution nor any statute so declares.
Fourth. Moreover, we are of opinion Congress has approved a policy at variance with the petitioner’s contentions. This is demonstrated by examination of two statutes, with their legislative history, and the hearings and debates respecting proposed legislation which failed of passage.
‘The Secretary of the Interior (now the Secretary of Commerce, act of February 14, 1903, c. 552, § 12, 32 Stat. 830) and the Commissioner of Patents are authorized to grant any officer of the government, except officers and employees of the Patent Office, a patent for any invention of the classes mentioned in section forty eight hundred and eighty six of the Revised Statutes, when such invention is used or to be used in the public service, without the payment of any fee: Provided, That the applicant in his application shall state that the invention described therein, if patented, may be used by the government or any of its officers, or employees in the prosecution of work for the government, or by any other person in the United States, without the payment to him of any royalty thereon, which stipulation shall be included in the patent.’
This law was evidently intended to encourage government employees to obtain patents, by relieving them of the payment of the usual fees. The condition upon which the privilege was accorded is stated at the grant of free use by the government, ‘its officers or employees in the prosecution of work for the government, or by any other person in the United States.’ For some time the effect of the italicized phrase was a matter of doubt.
In 1910 the Judge Advocate General of the Army rendered an opinion to the effect that one taking a patent pursuant to the act threw his invention ‘open to public and private use in the United States.’13 It was later realized that this view made such a patent a contradiction in terms, for it secured no exclusive right to any one. In 1918 the Judge Advocate General gave a well-reasoned opinion14 holding that, if the statute were construed to involve a dedication to the public, the so-called patent would at most amount to a publication or prior reference. He concluded that the intent of the act was that the free use of the invention extended only to the government or those doing work for it. A similar construction was adopted in an opinion of the Attorney General.15 Several federal courts referred to the statute, and in dicta indicated disagreement with the views expressed in these later opinions.16
‘Provided, That the applicant in his application shall state that the invention described therein, if patented, may be manufactured and used by or for the Government for governmental purposes without the payment to him of any royalty thereon, which stipulation shall be included in the patent.’ (35 USCA § 45.)
‘It is clear that a literal construction of this proviso would work a dedication to the public of every patent taken out under the act. If the proviso must be construed literally we would have a situation wherein all the patents taken out under the act would be nullified by the very terms of the act under which they were granted, for the reason that a patent which does not carry with it the limited monopoly referred to in the Constitution is in reality not a patent at all. The only value that a patent has is the right that it extends to the patentee to exclude all others from making, using, or selling the invention for a certain period of years. A patent that is dedicated to the public is virtually the same as a patent that has expired.’
‘Because of the ambiguity referred to and and unsettled condition that has arisen therefrom, it has become the policy of the War Department to advise all its personnel who desire to file applications for letters patent, to do so under the general law and pay the required patent-office fee in each case.’
‘If the proposed legislation is enacted into law, Government officers and employees may unhesitatingly avail themselves of the benefits of the act with full assurance that in so doing their patent is not dedicated to the public by operation of law. The War Department has been favoring legislation along the lines of the proposed bill for the past five or six years.’
The House Committee in reporting the bill, after referring to the law as laid down in the Solomons Case, said: ‘The United States in such a case has an implied license to use the patent without compensation, for the reason that the inventor used the time or the money or the material of the United States in perfecting his invention. The use by the United States of such a patented invention without any authority from the owner thereof is a lawful use under existing law, and we have inserted the words ‘or lawful right to use the same’ in order to make it plain that we do not intend to make any change in existing law in this respect, and do not intend to give the owner of such a patent any claim against the United States for its use.’22 From this it is clear that Congress had no purpose to declare a policy at variance with the decisions of this court.
In 1923 the President sent to the Congress the report of an interdepartmental patents board created by executive order to study the question of patents within the government service and to recommend regulations establishing a policy to be followed in respect thereof. The report adverted to the fact that, in the absence of a contract providing otherwise, a patent taken out by a government employee, and any invention developed by one in the public service, is the sole property of the inventor. The committee recommended strongly against public dedication of such an invention, saying that this in effect voids a patent, and, if this were not so, ‘there is little incentive for anyone to take up a patent and spend time, effort, and money * * * on its commercial development without at least some measure of protection against others free to take the patent as developed by him and compete in its use. In such a case one of the chief objects of the patent law would be defeated.’24 In full accord is the statement on behalf of the Department of the Interior in a memorandum furnished with respect to the bill introduced in 1919.25
With respect to a policy of permitting the patentee to take a patent and control it in his own interest (subject, of course, to the government’s right of use, if any) the committee said:
‘* * * It must not be lost sight of that in general it is the constitutional right of every patentee to exploit his patent as he may desire, however expedient it may appear to endeavor to modify this right in the interest of the public when the patentee is in the Government service.’26
‘* * * It would, on the one hand, render difficult securing the best sort of technical men for the service and, on the other, would influence technical workers to resign in order to exploit inventions which they might evolve and suppress while still in the service. There has always been more or loss of a tendency for able men in the service to do this, particularly in view of the comparative meagerness of Government salaries; thus the Government has suffered loss among its most capable class of workers.’27
All of this legislative history emphasizes what we have stated—that the courts are incompetent to answer the difficult question whether the patentee is to be allowed his exclusive right or compelled to dedicate his invention to the public. It is suggested that the election rests with the authoritative officers of the government. Under what power, express or implied, may such officers, by administrative fiat, determine the nature and extent of rights exercised under a charter granted a patentee pursuant to constitutional and legislative provisions? Apart from the fact that express authority is nowhere to be found, the question arises, Who are the authoritative officers whose determination shall bind the United States and the patentee? The government’s position comes to this—that the courts may not re-examine the exercise of an authority by some officer, not named, purporting to deprive the patentee of the rights conferred upon him by law. Nothing would be settled by such a holding, except that the determination of the reciprocal rights and obligations of the government and its employee as respects inventions are to be adjudicated, without review, by an unspecified department head or bureau chief. Hitherto both the executive and the legislative branches of the government have concurred in what we consider the correct view,—that any such declaration of policy must come from Congress and that no power to declare it is vested in administrative officers.
The Court’s conclusion that the employment of Dunmore and Lowell did not contemplate that they should exercise inventive faculties in their service to the government, and that both courts below so found, seems to render superfluous much that is said in the opinion. For it has not been contended, and I certainly do not contend that, if such were the fact, there would be any foundation for the claim asserted by the government. But I think the record does not support the Court’s conclusion of fact. I am also unable to agree with the reasoning of the opinion, although on my view of the facts it would lead to the reversal of the decree below, which I favor.
When originally organized1 as a subdivision of the Department of Commerce, the functions of the Bureau of Standards consisted principally of the custody, comparison, construction, testing and calibration of standards and the solution of problems arising in connection with standards. But in the course of its investigation of standards of quality and performance it has gradually expanded into a laboratory for research of the broadest character of the various branches of science and industry and particularly in the field of engineering.2 Work of this nature is carried on for other government departments,3 the general public,4 and private industries.5 It is almost entirely supported by public funds,6 and is maintained in the public interest. In 1915, as the importance of radio to the government and to the public increased, Congress appropriated funds7 to the Bureau ‘for investigation and standardization of methods and instruments employed in radio communication.’ Similar annual appropriations have been made since, and public funds were allotted by Acts of July 1, 1916, c. 209, 39 Stat. 262, 324, and October 6, 1917, c. 79, 40 Stat. 345, 375, for the construction of a fireproof laboratory building ‘to provide additional space to be used for research and testing in radio communication,’ as well as ‘space and facilities for cooperative research and experimental work in radio communication’ by other departments of the government. Thus the conduct of research and scientific investigation in the field of radio has been a duty imposed by law upon the Bureau of Standards since 1915.
Radio research has been conducted in the radio section of the Electrical Division of the Bureau. In 1921 and 1922, when Dunmore and Lowell made the inventions in controversy, they were employed in this section as members of the scientific staff. They were not, of course, engaged to invent, in the sense in which a carpenter is employed to build a chest, but they were employed to conduct scientific investigations in a laboratory devoted principally to applied rather than pure science, with full knowledge and expectation of all concerned that their investigations might normally lead, as they did, to invention. The Bureau was as much devoted to the advancement of the radio art by invention as by discovery which falls short of it. Hence –invention in the field of radio was a goal intimately related to and embraced within the purposes of the work of the scientific staff.
Both courts below found that Dunmore and Lowell were impelled to make these inventions ‘solely by their own scientific curiosity.’ They undoubtedly proceeded upon their own initiative beyond the specific problems upon which they were authorized or directed to work by their superiors in the Bureau, who did not actively supervise their work in its inventive stages. But the evidence leaves no doubt that in all they did they were following the established practice of the section. For members of the research staff were expected and encouraged to follow their own scientific impulses in pursuing their researches and discoveries to the point of useful application, whether they involved invention or not, and even though they did not relate to the immediate problem in hand. After the inventions had been conceived, they were disclosed by the inventors to their chief, and they devoted considerable time to perfecting them, with his express approval. All the work was carried on by them in the government laboratory with the use of government materials and facilities, during the hours for which they received a government salary. Its progress was recorded throughout in weekly and monthly reports which they were required to file, as well as in their laboratory notebooks. It seems clear that, in thus exercising their inventive powers in the pursuit of ideas reaching beyond their specific assignments, the inventors were discharging the duties expected of scientists employed in the laboratory; Dunmore, as well as his supervisors, testified that such was their conception of the nature of the work. The conclusion is irresistible that their scientific curiosity was precisely what gave the inventors value as research workers; the government employed it and gave it free rein in performing the broad duty of the Bureau of advancing the radio art by discovery and invention.
The courts below did not find that there was any agreement between the government and the inventors as to their relative rights in the patents, and there was no evidence to support such a finding. They did not find, and upon the facts in evidence and within the range of judicial notice they could not find, that the work done by Dunmore and Lowell leading to the inventions in controversy was not within the scope of their employment. Such a finding was unnecessary to support the decisions below, which proceeded on the theory relied on by the respondent here, that, in the absence of an express contract to assign it, an employer is entitled to the full benefit of the patent granted to an employee, only when it is for a particular invention which the employee was specifically hired or directed to make. The bare references by the court below to the obvious facts that ‘research’ and ‘invention’ are not synonymous, and that all research work in the Bureau is not concerned with invention, fall far short of a finding that the work in the Bureau did not contemplate invention at all. Those references were directed to a different end, to the establishment of what is conceded here, that Dunmore and Lowell were not specifically hired or directed to make the inventions, because in doing so they proceeded beyond the assignments given them by their superiors. The court’s conception of the law, applied to this ultimate fact, led inevitably to its stated conclusion that the claim of the government is without support in reason or authority, ‘unless we should regard a general employment for research work as synonymous with a particular employment (or assignment) for inventive work.’
The opinion of this Court apparently rejects the distinction between specific employment or assignment and general employment to invent, adopted by the court below and supported by authority, in favor of the broader position urged by the government that, wherever the employee’s duties involve the exercise of inventive powers, the employer is entitled to an assignment of the patent on any invention made in the scope of the general employment. As I view the facts, I think such a rule, to which this Court has not hitherto given explicit support, would require a decree in favor of the government. It would also require a decree in favor of a private employer, on the ground stated by the court that, as the employee ‘has only produced what he is employed to invent,’ a specifically enforceable ‘term of the agreement necessarily is that what he is paid to produce belongs to his paymaster.’ A theory of decision so mechanical is not forced upon us by precedent, and cannot, I think, be supported.
But where, as in this case, the employment contemplates invention, the adequacy of such a compromise is more doubtful, not because it contravenes an agreement for an assignment, which may not exist, but because, arguably, as the patent is the fruit of the very work which the employee is hired to do, and for which he is paid, it should no more be withheld from the employer, in equity and good conscience, than the product of any other service which the employee engages to render. This result has been reached where the contract was to devise a means for solving a defined problem, Standard Parts Co. v. Peck, supra, and the decision has been thought to establish the employer’s right wherever the employee is hired or assigned to evolve a process or mechanism for meeting a specific need. Magnetic Mfg. Co. v. Dings Magnetic Separator Co. (C.C.A.) 16 F.(2d) 739; Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Miller (C.C.A.) 22 F.(2d) 353, 356; Houghton v. United States (C.C.A.) 23 F.(2d) 386. But the court below and others have thought (Pressed Steel Car Co. v. Hansen, supra; Houghton v. United States, supra; Amdyco Corp. v. Urquhart, supra), as the respondent argues, that only in cases where the employment or assignment is thus specific may the employer demand all the benefits of the employee’s invention. The basis of such a limitation is not articulate in the cases. There is at least a question whether its application may not be attributed, in some instances, to the readier implication of an actual promise to assign the patent, where the duty is to invent a specific thing (see Pressed Steel Car Co. v. Hansen, supra, 137 F. 415), or, in any case, to the reluctance of equity logically to extend, in this field, the principle that the right to claim the service includes the right to claim its product. The latter alternative may find support in the policy of the patent laws to secure to the inventor the fruits of his inventive genius, in the hardship which may be involved in imposing a duty to assign all inventions, see Dalzell v. Dueber Watch Case Mfg. Co., supra, 149 U.S. 323, 13 S.Ct. 886, 37 L.Ed. 749, cf. Aspinwall Mfg. Co. v. Gill (C.C.) 32 F. 697, 700, and in a possible inequality in bargaining power of employer and employee. But compare Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Miller, supra, 22 F.(2d) 355; Hulse v. Bonsack Mach. Co. (C.C.A.) 65 F. 864, 868; see 30 Columbia Law Rev. 1172, 1176—1178. There is no reason for determining now the weight which should be accorded these objections to complete control of the invention by the employer, in cases of ordinary employment for private purposes. Once it is recognized, as it must be, that the function of the Court in every case is to determine whether the employee may, in equity and good conscience, retain the benefits of the patent, it is apparent that the present case turns upon considerations which distinguish it from any which has thus far been decided.
The inventors were not only employed to engage in work which unmistakably required them to exercise their inventive genius as occasion arose; they were a part of a public enterprise. It was devoted to the improvement of the art of radio communication for the benefit of the people of the United States, carried on in a government laboratory, maintained by public funds. Considerations which might favor the employee where the interest of the employer is only in private gain are therefore of slight significance; the policy dominating the research in the Bureau, as the inventors knew, was that of the government to further the interests of the public by advancing the radio art. For the work to be successful, the government must be free to use the results for the benefit of the public in the most effective way. A patent monopoly in individual employees, carrying with it the power to suppress the invention, or at least to exclude others from using it, would destroy this freedom; a shop right in the government would not confer it. For these employees, in the circumstances, to attempt to withhold from the public and from the government the full benefit of the inventions which it has paid them to produce, appears to me so unconscionable and inequitable as to demand the interposition of a court exercising chancery powers. A court which habitually enjoins a mortgagor from acquiring and setting up a tax title adversely to the mortgagee, Middletown Savings Bank v. Bacharach, 46 Conn. 513, 524; Chamberlain v. Forbes, 126 Mich. 86, 85 N.W. 253; Waring v. National Savings & Trust Co., 138 Md. 367, 114 A. 57; see 2 Jones on Mortgages (8th Ed.) § 841, should find no difficulty in enjoining these employees and the respondent claiming under them from asserting, under the patent laws, rights which would defeat the very object of their employment. The capacity of equitable doctrine for growth and of courts of equity to mould it to new situations was not exhausted with the establishment of the employer’s shop right. See Essex Trust Co. v. Enwright, 214 Mass. 507, 102 N.E. 441, 47 L.R.A.(N.S.) 567; Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545, 62 A.L.R. 1.
If, in the application of familiar principles to the situation presented here, we must advance somewhat beyond the decided cases, I see nothing revolutionary in the step. We need not be deterred by fear of the necessity, inescapable in the development of the law, of setting limits to the doctrine we apply, as the need arises. That prospect does not require us to shut our eyes to the obvious consequences of the decree which has been rendered here. The result is repugnant to common notions of justice and to policy as well, and the case must turn upon these considerations if we abandon the illusion that equity is called upon merely to enforce a contract, albeit one that is ‘implied.’ The case would be more dramatic if the inventions produced at public expense were important to the preservation of human life, or the public health, or the agricultural resources of the country. The principle is the same here, though the inventions are of importance only in the furtherance of human happiness. In enlisting their scientific talent and curiosity in the performance of the public service in which the Bureau was engaged, Dunmore and Lowell necessarily renounced the prospect of deriving from their work commercial rewards incompatible with it.9 Hence there is nothing oppressive or unconscionable in requiring them or their licensee to surrender their patents at the instance of the United States, as there probably would be if the inventions had not been made within the scope of their employment or if the employment did not contemplate invention at all.
The Act of April 30, 1928, 45 Stat. 467, 468 (35 USCA § 45), amending an earlier statute of 1883 (22 Stat. 625), so as to permit a patent to be issued to a government employee without payment of fees, for any invention which the head of a department or independent bureau certifies ‘is used or liable to be used in the public interest,’ and which the application specifies may, if patented, ‘be manufactured and used by or for the Government for governmental purposes without the payment * * * of any royalty,’ was passed, it is true, with the general purpose of encouraging government employees to take out patents on their inventions. But this purpose was not, as the opinion of the Court suggests, born of a congressional intent that a government employee who conceives an invention in the course of his employment should be protected in his right to exclude all others but the government from using it. Congress was concerned neither with enlarging nor with narrowing the relative rights of the government and its employees.10 This is apparent from the language of the statute that the patent shall be issued without a fee ‘subject to existing law,’ as well as from the records of its legislative history.11
The purpose of Congress in facilitating the patenting of inventions by government employees was to protect the existing right of the government to use all devices invented in the service, whether or not the patentee was employed to use his inventive powers. Experience had shown that this shop right was jeopardized unless the employee applied for a patent, since without the disclosure incident to the application the government was frequently hampered in its defense of claims by others asserting priority of invention. But doubt which had arisen whether an application for a patent under the Act of 1883 did not operate to dedicate the patent to the public,12 and reluctance to pay the fees otherwise required, had led government employees to neglect to make applications, even when they were entitled to the benefits of the monopoly subject only to the government’s right of use. This doubt the amendment removed. It can hardly be contended that, in removing it in order to aid the government in the protection of its shop right, Congress declared a policy that it should have no greater right to control a patent procured either under this special statute or under the general patent laws by fraud or any other type of inequitable conduct. Had such a policy been declared, it is difficult to see on what basis we could award the government a remedy, as it seems to be agreed we would, if Dunmore and Lowell had been specifically employed to make the inventions. There is nothing to indicate that Congress adopted one policy for such a case and a contrary one for this.
I agree with Mr. Justice STONE’S analysis of the facts showing the nature of the employment of Dunmore and Lowell, and with his conclusions as to the legal effect of that employment. As the people of the United States should have the unrestricted benefit of the inventions in such a case, I think that the appropriate remedy would be to cancel the patents.
Webster’s New International Dictionary: ‘Monopoly.’
‘Mr. LaGuardia. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, is not the proviso too broad? Suppose an employee of the Government invents some improvement which is very valuable, is he compelled to give the Government free use of it?
‘Mr. Vestal (who reported the bill for the Committee and was in charge of it). If he is employed by the Government and the invention is made while working in his capacity as an agent of the Government. If the head of the bureau certifies this invention will be used by the Government, then the Government, of course, gets it without the payment of any royalty.
‘Mr. LaGuardia. The same as a factory rule?
‘Mr. Vestal. Yes; but the man who takes out the patent has his commercial rights outside.
‘Mr. LaGuardia. Outside of the Government?
‘Mr. Vestal. Yes.
‘Mr. LaGuardia. But the custom is, and without this bill, the Government has the right to the use of the improvement without payment if it is invented in Government time and in Government work.
‘Mr. Vestal. That is correct; and then on top of that, may I say that a number of instances have occurred where an employee of the Government, instead of taking out a patent had some one else take out the patent and the Government has been involved in a number of suits. There is now $600,000,000 worth of such claims in the Court of Claims.’
‘That whenever an invention described in and covered by a patent of the United States shall hereafter be used by the United States without license of the owner thereof or lawful right to use the same, such owner may recover reasonable compensation for such use by suit in the Court of Claims: Provided, however, That said Court of Claims shall not entertain a suit or reward compensation under the provisions of this Act where the claim for compensation is based on the use by the United States of any article heretofore owned, leased, used by, or in the possession of the United States: Provided further, That in any such suit the United States may avail itself of any and all defenses, general or special, which might be pleaded by a defendant in an action for infringement, as set forth in Title Sixty of the Revised Statutes, or otherwise: And provided further, That the benefits of this Act shall not inure to any patentee, who, when he makes such claim is in the employment or service of the Government of the United States; or the assignee of any such patentee; nor shall this Act apply to any device discovered or invented by such employee during the time of his employment or service.’
Queen’s Regulations (Addenda 1895, 1st February); chapter 1, Instructions for Officers in General, pp. 15, 16.
Much of the expansion of the Bureau’s activities in this direction took place during the war. See Annual Report of the Director, Bureau of Standards, for 1919, p. 25; War Work of the Bureau of Standards (1921), Misc. Publications of the Bureau of Standards No. 46. The scope of the Bureau’s scientific work is revealed by the annual reports of the Director. See, also, the bibliography of Bureau publications for the years 1901—1925, Circular of the Bureau of Standards No. 24 (1925).
The consuming public is directly benefited not only by the Bureau’s work in improving the standards of quality and performance of industry, but also by the assistance which it lends to governmental bodies, state and city. See Annual Reports of the Director for 1915, 1916, 1917, p. 14; Annual Report for 1918, p. 16; National Bureau of Standards, Its Functions and Activity, Circular of the Bureau of Standards, No. 1 (1925), pp. 28, 33.
No fees have been charged except to cover the cost of testing, but the Act of June 30, 1932, c. 314, § 312, 47 Stat. 410 (15 USCA § 276), directs that ‘for all comparisons, calibrations, tests or investigations, performed’ by the Bureau, except those performed for the Government of the United States or a State, ‘a fee sufficient in each case to compensate the * * * Bureau * * * for the entire cost of the services rendered shall be charged. * * *’
It has been said that many scientists in the employ of the government regard the acceptance of patent rights leading to commercial rewards in any case as an abasement of their work. Hearings on Exploitation of Inventions by Government Employees, Senate Committee on Patents, 65th Cong., 3d Sess. (1919), pp. 16, 17. See, also, the Hearings before the same Committee, January 23, 1920, 66th Cong., 2d Sess. (1920), p. 5. The opinion of the Court attributes importance to the fact, seemingly irrelevant, that other employees of the Bureau have in some instances in the past taken out patents on their inventions which, so far as appears, the government has not prevented them from enjoying. The circumstances under which those inventions were made do not appear. But, even if they were the same as those in the present case, there is no basis for contending that, because the government saw fit not to assert its rights in other cases, it has lost them in this. Moreover, there is no necessary inconsistency in the government’s position if it concluded in those cases that the public interest would be served best by permitting the employees to exploit their inventions themselves, and adopted a contrary conclusion here.
After the death of this bill in the Senate, February 21, 1921, the subject was again considered by an Interdepartmental Board established by executive order of President Harding. August 9, 1922. Its report was transmitted to Congress by President Coolidge, in December, 1923. Sen. Doc. No. 83, 68th Cong., 1st Sess. The Board found that there had never been any general governmental policy established with respect to inventions, that whether public dedication, private exploitation, or governmental control and administration is desirable depends largely on the nature of the invention. Accordingly, legislation was recommended establishing a permanent Interdepartmental Patents Board with the power to demand assignments of patents on those inventions thereafter developed in the service which ‘in the interest of the national defense, or otherwise in the public interest’ should be controlled by the government. No action was taken upon this proposal.
Since that time the Director of the Bureau of Standards has recommended that a ‘uniform, equitable policy of procedure’ be defined for the government by legislation. Annual Report for 1925, p. 40. In the Report for 1931 it is said (page 46) that the ‘patent policy of this Bureau has always been that patentable devices developed by employees paid out of public funds belong to the public,’ and the Report for 1932 adds (page 40) ‘if not so dedicated directly, the vested rights should be held by the Government.’