Opinion ID: 428566
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the validity of the lewis-brown patent

Text: 47 The District Court held the Lewis-Brown patent invalid under 35 U.S.C. Sec. 103 13 on the grounds that in light of the prior art the subject matter of the patent taken as a whole would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was conceived. 521 F.Supp. at 185. Appellants argue that in reaching this conclusion the District Court disregarded the presumption created by 35 U.S.C. Sec. 282 14 that a patent is valid over the prior art considered by the Patent Office. Since the District Court considered the same prior art as did the Patent Office, appellants argue that the District Court was bound by the Patent Office's determination of validity. 48 Appellants misapprehend the nature of the presumption created by 35 U.S.C. Sec. 282. 15 As this Court noted in Universal Electric Co. v. A.O. Smith Corp., 643 F.2d 1240, 1245 (6th Cir.1981), the presumption merely places the burden of proof of invalidity on the party raising the issue and it has no independent evidentiary value. It does not prevent a court save in cases of clearest error from invalidating a patent on the prior art the Patent Office considered, as appellants would have us hold. 49 In Graham v. John Deer Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17, 86 S.Ct. 684, 693, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966), the Supreme Court established the factual inquiries that must be made when obviousness is alleged: the scope and content of the prior art are to be determined; differences between the prior art and the claims at issue are to be ascertained; and the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art resolved. Once these factual determinations are made, the court must then decide as a matter of law whether the subject matter of the patent in issue is obvious. The findings of the District Court on the factual issues are subject to the clearly erroneous standard. Universal Electric, 643 F.2d at 1247 and cases cited therein. 50 Regarding the scope and content of the prior art, the District Court found that the use of character generators in connection with ink drop printing was known in the art prior to Lewis' and Brown's work: the Winston patent discloses a character generator of sorts and Sweet used a sine-wave generator, a kind of function generator, with his machine. 521 F.Supp. at 183. 51 Regarding the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue, the District Court found that the Lewis-Brown patent discloses, in essence, a function generator like that used in the Winston device attached to an ink droplet charging apparatus like that used in the Sweet device. 521 F.Supp. at 176. 52 Regarding the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art at the time of Lewis' and Brown's work, the District Court found that artisans in the field of ink jet printing were familiar with the use of character generators. 521 F.Supp. at 183. The court also cited the short time that passed between Sweet's invention and the Lewis-Brown invention as evidence that the use of a character generator with the Sweet device would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. Id. 53 Based on our review of the record, we cannot say that any of these findings are erroneous. A consideration of these findings leads to but one conclusion: attaching a character generator to the Sweet device--which appellants concede is the Lewis-Brown invention, Appellant's Brief at 19,--would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of Lewis' and Brown's work. 54 Since we agree with the District Court that the Lewis-Brown patent is invalid for obviousness, we need not consider the District Court's conclusion that the DIJIT printer does not infringe this patent. 16 Universal Electric, 643 F.2d at 1241. 55 Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed. 56