Opinion ID: 279293
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Leitz Folders

Text: 35 The district court found that, 36 '25. Plastic folders having a face sheet of translucent rigid polyvinyl chloride embossed with color-contrasting lettering were used in 1955 at Industrial Rayon Corporation, a company in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to January 1955, Mr. L. L. Malm, a vicepresident of Industrial Rayon, had, while in Germany, obtained fifty of these folders and brought them back to Cleveland where the folders were used by him and other officers of Industrial Rayon. In January 1955 he caused to be issued a purchase order for two hundred and fifty additional folders from the maker, the Louis Leitz Company, in Germany. For purchase identification purposes in the purchase order, Malm used the color-contrasting information embossed on the folders. After these folders were delivered to Malm in Cleveland in February 1955, some of the folders were used by him in corporate files under his supervision and the remainder were given to other officers of the company and to others throughout the company. The face sheets of the folders were plastic sheet articles of polyvinyl chloride having a uniform background color, and they had a contrast color embossment which had been produced by cold deformation of the plastic. The record establishes that the opaque white color of the embossment on the sheets made it apparent to persons skilled in the plastic art that it was made by cold embossment or deformation of the sheet. The use at Industrial Rayon was public and constituted an anticipation of the claimed subject matter of the Souza-- '625 and Souza-- '822 patents.' C.T. 82-83, 149. 37 Dymo's challenge to this finding is restricted to the contention that the Leitz folders were not in 'public use' within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. 102(b) (1964), but rather were the objects of a 'secret use.' It is clear, however, that the folders were not intentionally hidden by Industrial Rayon, as in the situations to which holdings of 'secret usage' have been limited. See, e.g., Monolith Portland Midwest Co. v. Kaisar Aluminum & Chem. Corp., 267 F.Supp. 726, 783 (S.D.Cal.1966); E. W. Bliss Co. v. Southern Can Co., 251 F. 903 (D.Md.), aff'd, 265 F. 1018 (4th Cir. 1920). They were found to have been put to ordinary use, and such action is sufficient-- where, as here, one skilled in the art would have recognized them as produced by a simple embossing process, R.T. 1043-44-- to constitute a 'public use' rendering the Souza method and label patents invalid. Hall v. Macneale, 107 U.S. 90, 97, 2 S.Ct. 73, 27 L.Ed. 367 (1883).