Opinion ID: 1550999
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Iron Patent.

Text: The application for the iron patent was filed on June 17, 1911, and it remained nearly 7 years in the Patent Office. Of this time it was in interference for over a year, was finally allowed on June 3, 1915, and renewed on June 2, 1917, to be reallowed on the 27th. Even then the fee was paid on the last day possible, December 26, 1917. The evidence of a purpose to keep it in the office to the last moment lawfully possible is very strong. The original specifications do not mention the possibility of silicates. The peg on which the amendments, made 4 years later, must hang, are certain passages and claims which prescribe the addition of enough coal to leave an unburned residue after the sinter is complete. This and the statement that the ore is partly melted, and that the process is like smelting and a step in it, are thought to show that temperature control against silicification, which was later so much amplified. The argument is that, as one cannot preserve any coal without keeping the temperature too low for silicates of iron to form, some temperature control was implied. Even so, a follower of the specifications who cared nothing about keeping unburned coal in his sinter would receive no information that he would avoid silicates, if he did; nor would he get any intimation that, if he burned out the coal, they would appear. We decline to accept such obscure references as even premonitions of the matter added later. They are straws at which the patentee now clutches to extend his invention. Therefore we think the matter so introduced a new invention, and it might be argued that claims 1 and 6 were invalid, irrespective of whether intervening rights had occurred or how much time had elapsed (Chicago & N. W. Railway Co. v. Sayles, 97 U. S. 554, 24 L. Ed. 1053). But we need not go so far; the delay was for over 2 years after  Greenawalt's plant had been erected at Modern and was in operation, and, if his process involves temperature control at all, a disputed question, the amendment was too late. At least some satisfactory excuse must be given. Mahn v. Harwood, 112 U. S. 354, 5 S. Ct. 174, 6 S. Ct. 451, 28 L. Ed. 665; Webster Electric Co. v. Splitdorf Electrical Co., 264 U. S. 463, 44 S. Ct. 342, 68 L. Ed. 792; Westinghouse, etc., Co. v. Jeffrey-De Witt Co., 22 F.(2d) 277 (C. C. A. 2). Just what that excuse might be does not appear in the books, and we need not here inquire what might serve, since none is offered which deserves discussion. Claims 1 and 6, if infringed, were therefore invalid. That is enough to dispose of them here; it is not necessary to make an unconditional finding that they are invalid. As to them the bill may be dismissed. Claims 4 and 8 do not expressly involve temperature control, and claim 8 certainly should not be so construed, being introduced a year before that theme entered the disclosure at all. Although claim 4 describes some of the chemical reactions thought to take place, we do not see that it adds anything to claim 8. They occur whenever the basic process is practiced with iron oxides and coal, coke, or the like. These two claims differ only in that the first is confined to such metals, and the second is applicable to any fine metal-bearing material. So viewed, their validity depends upon whether it was invention to use the basic process for sintering iron oxides with the addition of coal. The specifications of that patent themselves contemplated the sintering of iron sulphides, for which no addition of coal or other carbon products was necessary. Upon this, as upon other matters relating to the arts, it is best to make no à priori assumptions; what seems simple may in fact be difficult. However, omitting, as in considering these claims we must, temperature control and the avoidance of silicates of iron, the process appears to us completely anticipated by Heberlein's patent, 844,355, which produced satisfactory sinter, save for silicates. We can see nothing left of the mere process of sintering iron oxides by the addition of coal, except that Heberlein says that his process may be conveniently carried on in his large holders. That might conceivably be enough, were it not for the basic patent itself; but that, too, was in the art. To say that, given that patent, it was invention to use it for nonsulphides in combination with Heberlein's method, appears to us too much. The merit of the invention chiefly urged is its avoidance of silicates; it does not appear that merely to use carbonaceous material when the ores did not contain their own combustible proved a great step in the art. We think these claims anticipated, and it is not necessary to consider the issue of infringement as to them, any more than as to claims 1 and 6.