Opinion ID: 208706
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Merrill v. Yeomans

Text: My colleagues also rely on Merrill v. Yeomans, 94 U.S. (4 Otto) 568, 24 L.Ed. 235 (1877). Again, the relevance is remote. The Merrill Court explained that the issue was the correct construction of plaintiff's patent, id. at 569, construing the following claim: [T]he above-described new manufacture of the deodorized heavy hydrocarbon oils, suitable for lubricating and other purposes, free from the characteristic odors of hydrocarbon oils, and having a slight smell like fatty oil, from hydrocarbon oils, by treating them substantially as hereinbefore described. Id. at 570. The Court examined the specification to determine what was invented, and found that the invention was directed solely to a process, not to a product. The Court then concluded that the claim's usage new manufacture referred to the manufacturing process, and not to the product. The claim was thus a process claim, and no product-by-process issue was presented. The Court concluded that the defendant's oil, which was made by a different process, did not infringe. The Merrill Court discussed its practice of looking to the patent application and interpreting the claim in light of what was really invented: [W]here it appears that a valuable invention has really been made, this court, giving full effect to all that is found in the application on which the Patent Office acted, will uphold that which was really invented, and which comes within any fair interpretation of the patentee's assertion of claim. Id. at 573. This approach is inimical to the en banc court's theory that it is irrelevant what the patentee describes as his invention, and that if a process step is mentioned in the claim or substantially described in the specification, the claim always requires performance of that step. Although the Court in Merrill was not confronted with a situation of indescribable product or necessity bred of complexityindeed no product at all was claimedneither did the Court hold that every product invention must be limited by the process that produced the product.