Opinion ID: 272884
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The slotted-flange feature

Text: 6 The novelty and utility of slotted flanged weatherstrip and the infringement of claims 1, 3, and 4, if valid, were conceded by Zegers, Inc. in the district court. The only issue presented was whether providing slots in flanged weatherstrip to receive the hooks of clips secured to window frames would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art. 7 Both the hooked-end clips and flanged weatherstrip were old in the art. Flanged weatherstrip had been in use for many years; clips had been in use during the period between their conception and reduction to practice by Zegers, Inc. in early 1957 and Edward A. Zegers' idea of slotting the weatherstrip in January 1959. The evidence showed that Zegers, Inc. sold its flat nail-on clips for use with flangeless weatherstrip simultaneously with various lines of flanged weatherstrip (having the same general uses as flangeless weatherstrip) for approximately two years without discovering a method of using them together. The evidence further showed that on one occasion Zegers, Inc. had unsuccessfully attempted to mount flanged weatherstrip to a clip by using a type of clip which engaged the back of the weatherstrip unit. 8 On the other hand, testimony was introduced indicating that little or no interest in using flanged weatherstrip with the clip of the Zegers, Inc. patent had ever been expressed. In this connection, the actual conception of the idea of slotting flanged weatherstrip by Edward A. Zegers is illuminating. In January 1959 the plaintiff met at his plant with two customers of considerable experience in the millwork business and showed them a sample of his new press-in clip. The customers at that time were using flanged weatherstrip and had never seen clips for use with any kind of weatherstrip. When the plaintiff finished explaining his new clip to them, the customers remarked that it was a good idea, but that they could not use it because they were using, and preferred, flanged weatherstrip. The plaintiff's almost immediate rejoinder was that flanged weatherstrip could be adapted for use with his clip. He proceeded to prove his point by punching slots in a sample piece of flanged weatherstrip found in the shop and inserting the hooked ends of the clip into the slots 9 The district court found that the defendant failed to satisfy its burden of presenting 'clear and cogent' evidence of obviousness to rebut the presumption of validity of the patent. In addition, the district judge relied upon the fact that 'no one had thought to use the clip with (flanged) weatherstrip until the plaintiff did so.' We are of the view that slotting the flanged weatherstrip would have been obvious to anyone with ordinary skill in the art who had occasion to consider the possibility of using flanged weatherstrip with hooked-end clips and that therefore claims 1, 3, and 4 of the patent are invalid. 10 There is no doubt, as the plaintiff has reminded us, that the fact that the solution to a problem is simple, or appears so, when viewed in retrospect, does not mean the solution was obvious when it was made, and that courts must guard against the exercise of hindsight in assessing the obviousness of a given improvement in the art. AMP Inc. v. Vaco Products Co.,280 F.2d 518 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 364 U.S. 921, 81 S.Ct. 286, 5 L.Ed.2d 260 (1960); Charles Peckat Mfg. Co. v. Jacobs, 178 F.2d 794 (7th Cir. 1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 915, 70 S.Ct. 575, 94 L.Ed. 1340 (1950). But at the same time, the application of section 103 in a manner consistent with rewarding only genuine contributions to the useful knowledge of an art requires that mere adaptions, arrangements, or manipulations be denied the grant of legal monopoly. If what has been created demonstrates no more ingenuity than the work of a mechanic skilled in the art, if the display of inventive capacity 'involves only the exercise of the ordinary faculties of reasoning upon the materials supplied by a special knowledge, and the facility of manipulation which results from its habitual and intelligent practice,' Hollister v. Benedict & Burnham Mfg. Co., 113 U.S. 59, 73, 5 S.Ct. 717, 724, 28 L.Ed. 901 (1885), then the product does not possess that 'impalpable something' characterized as invention. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equip. Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 151, 71 S.Ct. 127, 95 L.Ed. 162 (1950). 11 The plaintiff contends that the decision of the district court should be affirmed because the defendant introduced no proof that slotting the flanged weatherstrip was obvious. We think the simple juxtaposition of the prior art clip and flanged weatherstrip which were introduced into evidence disposes of this contention. It was not necessary to introduce evidence from the millwork art or any other art that slotting is a common mechanical means. It is true that the defendant did not think of slotting flanged weatherstrip, even though it sold such units simultaneously with its clips and in fact made an unsuccessful attempt to attach another type of clip to the back of its flanged weatherstrip. But these facts are not of themselves conclusive of nonobviousness, and it is also true, as the plaintiff testified, that no one suggested the desirability of using these items together until just prior to the time the problem was solved. 12 All that was done by the plaintiff-patentee was to provide slots, not totally unknown in themselves, in old flanged weatherstrip in order that the weatherstrip thus perforated might be received by the hooked end of a prior art clip. The suggestion that invention may reside in adding slots to prior art devices was commented upon by the Ninth Circuit in Bergman v. Aluminum Lock Shingle Corp., 251 F.2d 801 (9th Cir. 1957). There the court stated: 13 Twilight is falling upon 'gadgets' as subjects of patents. The dusk commenced to gather half a dozen years ago when, in a epochal decision, (Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equip. Corp., supra) the Supreme Court fixed its canon against dignifying combined 'segments of prior art' with the title of 'inventions.' In a concurring opinion in that case, Mr. Justice Douglas compiled a devastating list of 'gadgets' that have been placed 'under the armour of patents.' The specification at bar proclaims at the outset that it is a 'drain slot which forms the basis of this invention.' If the trivial devices listed by Mr. Justice Douglas are 'gadgets,' then, in the hierarchy of invention, a slot should be classified as a subgadget   . Id. at 802. 14 Avoiding the temptation to make the unnecessary generalization that slotting, wherever found, is not invention, we hold that adding slots to an existing device to permit it to be used in conjunction with hooks on another existing device involves no more than the 'exercise of the ordinary faculties of reasoning upon the materials supplied by a special knowledge,' Hollister v. Benedict & Burnham Mfg. Co., supra, and was therefore obvious within the meaning of section 103.