Case Name: In re Cresswell
Court: United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1951-02-27
Citations: 38 C.C.P.A. 917
Docket Number: No. 5717
Parties: In re Cresswell
Judges: Before Garrett, Chief Judge, and Jackson, O’Connell, Johnson, and Worley, Associate Judges
Reporter: Court of Customs and Patent Appeals Reports
Volume: 38
Pages: 917–924

Head Matter:
187 F. (2d) 632; 89 USPQ 147
In re Cresswell
(No. 5717)
United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals,
February 27, 1951
. Ellis- S. Middleton (Edmund E. 'Parry, Jr., of counsel) for appellant.
E. L. Reynolds for the Commissioner of Patents.
[Oral argument May 11, 1950, by Mr. Middleton and Mr. Reynolds'; reargued January 10, 1951, by Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Middleton]
Before Garrett, Chief Judge, and Jackson, O’Connell, Johnson, and Worley, Associate Judges

Opinion:
WoRley, Judge,
delivered the opinion of the court:
This is an appeal from the decision of the Board of Appeals of the United States Patent Office affirming the decision of the Primary Examiner finally rejecting, as unpatentable over prior art, claims 21 to 23, inclusive, in appellant's application for a patent relating to collagenous articles and the method of making them. The claims were further rejected as being indefinite.
The appeal was argued on May 11, 1950, and on June 30, 1950, the court rendered its decision which reversed the holdings of the Patent Office. On August 16, 1950, the Solicitor for the Patent Office filed a petition for rehearing on that portion of the court's decision wherein we held the involved claims were sufficiently definite to meet the statutory requirements.
The petition was granted and argument was had thereon January 10,1951.
All of the claims of the application were rejected by the examiner, but ten process claims, Nos. 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 14 to 18, inclusive, were allowed by the Board of Appeals.
The references relied on are:
Schulte, 2,039,262, April 28, 1936.
Naturin (British), 482,628, April 1, 1938.
Highberger et al., 2,374,201, April 24,1945.
The appealed claims read:
21. A multifilament strand consisting principally of regenerated collagen, free from any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, including fibers.
22. A unitary strand of coalesced filaments, said filaments consisting principally of regenerated collagen, free from any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, including fibers.
- 23. A shape consisting principally of regenerated collagen, free from any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, including fibers.
Appellant's application relates to a method of making threads, strands, and tapes, either of a single or multifilament variety, in any length, from collagen or collagenous materials, for use principally as surgical sutures. Such threads or strands are uniform throughout as to size, strength, toughness, and capacity for chemical or indirect sterilization.
Collagen is a proteinous ingredient of the hide, skin, and muscles of vertebrates and occurs therein as fibrous matter; is in itself insoluble in water but, by suitable treatment in water at a high temperature, may be converted to gelatin.
Two questions are to be decided by this court; namely, does the prior art teach or disclose to one skilled in the art the making of the product disclosed in the rejected claims; and are the involved claims so vague or indefinite as to preclude patentability.
In deciding the first question, it is thought proper to point out that while both the board and the examiner relied mainly on the British patent, they also referred to the patents to Schulte and Highberger et al.
An examination of the British patent leads us to believe that the patentee did not produce, nor did he intend to produce, a prodiict completely free of fibers or of the insolubles referred to by appellant. Both tribunals of the Patent Office construed the following language from the British patent as applicable to the. limitation of the involved claims: "The boundaries between swelling and solution may even be caused to disappear to such an extent, that the individual fibres can no longer be recognised and the resulting mixtures can be forced through fine filters."
It is important to note, however, that immediately following the above quoted language, it is stated that "The resulting fibrous masses rich in water are shaped, " [Italics ours.] Appellant, on the other hand, repeatedly states, and the claims set forth, that his product is "free from any material insoluble in'a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, including fibers." [Italics ours.] '
While the Patent Office tribunals stated'that the Naturin disclosure is cumulative to the patents to Schulte and Highberger et al., it is to be observed that the patent to Highberger et al. relates primarily to collagen converted to gelatin, and that Schulte states that "The present invention is based on the concept that in order to manufacture products of exceptional quality, on the one hand, the fibrous structure of the starting material must be maintained and, on the other hand, the individual fibres must be brought into better combination with one another than hitherto." [Italics ours.]
The board agreed that appellant's product exhibits in evidence, produced by appellant's process, differ from the products of the cited prior art. In that connection the board stated:
A comparison between exhibits 4 to 8 and exhibits 9 to 20 cannot help hot impress ns with the obvious superiority of appellant's process in giving a product having materially greater dry and wet' strength, greater flexibility and finer diameter as compared with the products of the references. In the absence of any convincing adverse criticism of the affidavit and exhibits by the Examiner, it is clear to us that this showing must be accepted at face value.
We are of opinion that appellant's disclosure that his product is completely free of fibrous material and of any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, is not disclosed nor taught in the cited references and, therefore, he has produced a material that is new and different in kind from the products of the prior-art, and that the exercise of invention was required to make such, product.
Therefore we again hold as we did in our original decision that, appellant's disclosures are not to be found in the prior art.
The second question to be disposed of is whether the involved claims, are so vague and indefinite as to preclude patentability.
It is thought proper at this point to advert to what Congress has. said are the requirements to be met for a patent. This expression is found in E. S. 4888, as amended, and reads as follows:
Before any inventor or discoverer shall receive a patent for his invention or discovery he shall make application therefor, in writing, to the Commissioner of Patents, and shall file in the Patent Office a written description of the same,, and of the manner and process of making, constructing, compounding, and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, 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. The specification and claim shall be signed by the inventor. [Italics ours.]
One of the most recent interpretations of this statute is found in Graver Tank & Mfg. Co., Inc. et al. v. Linde Air Products Co., 336 U. S. 271, 277, 80 USPQ 451:
The statute makes provision for specification separately from the claims and requires that the latter "shall particularly point out and distinctly claim tító part, improvement, or combination which he claims as his invention or discovery." it would accomplish little to require that claims be separately written if they are not to be separately read. [Italics ours.]
As is pointed out by the solicitor in his petition for rehearing, this court has repeatedly made similar holdings citing, among others, In re Crowell, 23 C. C. P. A. (Patents) 1246, 84 F. (2d) 206, 30 USPQ 28, in which we .said:
However, whatever the specification and drawings may show in that respect, the claims themselves do not contain the features in any form, and it would seem that appellant is insisting that a limitation which he did not himself express in the claims shall be read into them by the Patent Office or by this court. This court, following the principle announced .by the Supreme Court, of the United States in the case of McCarthy v. Lehigh Valley Railroad Co.r 160 U. S..110, has again and again held that limitations not in the claims need not be considered. .
Also in the case of In re Custer, 36 C. C. P. A. (Patents) 927, 173 F. (2d) 226, 81 USPQ 99, it was said:
" it is well understood that applicants for patents may not have read Into their claims limitations not expressed therein although emphasized in their •application.
Counsel for appellant states that "claims should not be read in vacuo." We readily agree with that statement but we cannot avoid the statutory requirement that the applicant must rely on the claims themselves to "particularly point out and distinctly claim the part, Improvement, or combination which he claims as his invention or 'discovery." There is no contention on the part of the Patent Office that the invention is not sufficiently disclosed in the specification, but it does contend that the claims themselves do not properly define it.
For example, rejected claim No. 21, which is illustrative, reads :as follows: "A multifilament strand consisting principally of regenerated collagen, free from any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic acid, including fibers." In our opinion, as was stated below, the meaning of that paragraph may be construed in a number of ways. Despite such ambiguity we gave appellant "the benefit of the doubt in holding in our original opinion that he Intended to claim a product which was free from fibers and also free from any material insoluble in a dilute aqueous solution of an organic «•cid.
It is stated in appellant's specification that "Any organic acid is satisfactory, although from 0.05 to 0.10N formic acid or 0.5 to 1.0N :acetic acid are preferred. Any other concentration of other organic acids may be used so long as the pH of the solution falls within the specified range." [Italics ours.] There is nothing in the involved claims to indicate what the pH of the solution is. Consequently, vagueness and indefiniteness may be predicated on that lack alone.
The board also held that the expression "consisting principally of regenerated collagen" is indefinite and vague as to just what is intended to be covered and that it merely states what the minor portion is not. We agree with that holding.
It is obvious that the regenerated collagen could consist of at least •51 per centum of the finished article while other materials could 'easily be as high as 49 per centum. It seems reasonable to us, as is •argued by the solicitor in his brief, to believe that many different kinds of products would result in the allowable changing of the quantities of the other ingredients with respect to the quantity of the collagen.
The rejected claims are drawn to a product of specified composition irrespective of the method by which it is made. As is argued by the solicitor in the petition for rehearing and not controverted by counsel for appellant in his opposition thereto, the defined product might be made by mixing pure collagen with any suitable material soluble in an organic acid. Clearly such method is different from that claimed by appellant.
We erred in onr former decision for the reason that we held the product claims to be patentable. The method claims were held to-involve invention. By reason of that holding and because of the conceded superiority of the product of appellant and for the further reason that we held the prior art to be inapplicable, we inadvertently considered the product claims to be limited by appellant's process, and therefore we improperly read into the rejected claims method limitations of the application.
We are now of the opinion that the involved claims cannot properly be held to be patentable without reading into them limitations which,, although they appear in the specification, are not set out in the claims.
It is our considered opinion for the reasons set forth herein that the rejected claims do not conform to R. S. 4888. The decision of the Board of Appeals is affirmed.