Opinion ID: 377935
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The French Line Error

Text: 63 A fishing line manufactured and sold in France in the 1950's and allegedly identical to DuPont's invention was allowed into evidence. DuPont challenged its admissibility, arguing that the jury would erroneously treat it as evidence of prior art. 64 If the French line is the same invention as Keller's, 26 it was admitted here under erroneous instructions. 65 A prior use or sale constitutes prior art only if it occurs in this country. 35 U.S.C. § 102. Hence prior use in a foreign country is not prior art for the purpose of determining obviousness under section 103, and evidence respecting the French line was inadmissible to prove prior art, the line having never been used or sold in this country. 66 In admitting the evidence, the court instructed the jury to consider it solely as it bears on the state of the art and as it relates to the ultimate question of obviousness. (Emphasis ours). That instruction supplied no guidance from which the jury could be expected to have distinguished the French line from the prior art. The court's instruction, considered as a whole, was thus misleading and erroneous. 27 67 Berkley's brief mistakenly tells us that the court phrased its instruction in terms of the skill in the art. 28 The jury, however, would have been no less misled had that been true. The distinction is fine between prior art and either state of the art or skill in the art. The possibility of a jury confusing evidence admitted to show either of the latter with other evidence admitted to show prior art weighs heavily against use of a cautionary instruction phrased in the terms here employed. 68 Evidence demonstrating contemporaneous foreign invention by another has been considered even though it does not qualify as prior art. Stamicarbon, N. V. v. Escambia Chemical Corp., supra note 28; Reeves Bros., Inc. v. U. S. Laminating Corp., 417 F.2d 869, 872 (2d Cir. 1969). The similarity between contemporaneous invention and prior art dictates, however, that evidence of the former be cautiously admitted in a jury trial. The trial judge must carefully instruct the jury that the evidence is merely one possible indicium of obviousness. See Reeves Bros., Inc. v. U. S. Laminating Corp., id., at 872. That the same invention was contemporaneously made elsewhere may or may not, in the light of all the circumstances, be some indication that the invention would have been obvious, as the statute requires, to one of ordinary skill in the art. Nothing should be more clear in the law of patents than the concept that the same patentable invention may be contemporaneously made by more than one inventor. 29 (2) The Presumption of Validity Error 69 Because the French and Cuculo patents were classified in files searched by the examiner, DuPont sought this instruction: 70 It is also assumed that the examiner reviewed the prior art which was in the files which he searched during the prosecution of the application for the patent. 71 Berkley objected, and the court omitted the requested statement. 72 The statutory presumption of validity 30 flows from a congressional assumption that the PTO properly performs its administrative functions. Morgan v. Daniels, 153 U.S. 120, 124-25, 14 S.Ct. 772, 773-774, 38 L.Ed. 657 (1894); see Chicago Rawhide Manufacturing Co. v. Crane Packing Co., 523 F.2d 452, 458 (7th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1091, 96 S.Ct. 887, 47 L.Ed.2d 103 (1976); Beckman Instruments, Inc. v. Chemtronics, Inc., 439 F.2d 1369, 1374 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 956, 91 S.Ct. 353, 27 L.Ed.2d 264 (1970); Neff Instrument Corp. v. Cohu Electronics, Inc., 298 F.2d 82, 86 (9th Cir. 1961). The presumption is not conclusive and can be rebutted by proof that the PTO erred. That a reference was cited or assumedly considered does not preclude a court or jury from being convinced that the patent should have been refused in view of that reference. That is not to say, however, that the presumption of validity is limited to those references actually cited by the examiner. 73 The PTO's function entails a thorough scrutiny of prior art references. 31 The PTO Rules of Practice require the examiner to cite only what he considers the best references. 32 The file wrapper, i.e., the prosecution history, of a patent application lists the references cited against the application and the classes and subclasses of references inspected by the examiner. 33 Several courts have held that the examiner's search record is prima facie evidence that he considered all the references classified in the classes and subclasses searched and that he left uncited those he regarded as less relevant than those cited. Panduit Corp. v. Burndy Corp., 517 F.2d 535, 538 n.2 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 987, 96 S.Ct. 395, 46 L.Ed.2d 304 (1975); Elgen Manufacturing Corp. v. Grant Wilson, Inc., 285 F.2d 476, 479 (7th Cir. 1961); Farmhand, Inc. v. Lahman Manufacturing Co., supra at 760. A contrary view would destroy the presumption of administrative regularity on which the presumption of validity rests. 74 Assuming, arguendo, that Berkley's expert is correct in his generalized assertion at trial that references may occasionally be missing from the files, Congress, in enacting the presumption of validity, chose to assume prima facie that an oversight of relevant prior art did not occur. In view of the hundreds of patents in a single class or subclass, a requirement that the examiner cite every patent inspected would unreasonably retard the examination process. Thus, absent contrary evidence, it is improper to conclude that references not specifically cited by the examiner, but classified in areas he searched, were not considered by him. Cf. Hobbs v. United States, 451 F.2d 849, 863-64 (5th Cir. 1971). 75 The trial court's instruction that the presumption does not extend or exist as to prior art patents or publications which do not appear from the record of the file wrapper, and the refusal to give DuPont's requested instruction, left the jury unapprised of the full extent of the statutory presumption of validity. 34