Opinion ID: 428566
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Lewis-Brown Patent

Text: 15 Upon hearing of Sweet's work in late 1962, Arling D. Brown and Arthur M. Lewis of Brush Instruments added a character or function generator to Sweet's droplet-printing device thereby enabling the device to print alphanumeric characters. Attached as Appendix B is one of the illustrative embodiments included in the Lewis-Brown patent. Character generators are devices which are able to store letters and numerals and to send to the charging electrodes voltage signals corresponding to the letters and numerals. Messages, consisting of a predetermined sequence of letters and numerals, are sent to the character generator which translates the message to a series of voltage signals and then relays the translated message to the charging electrodes which then charge the appropriate droplets to the appropriate level thereby causing the message to be printed. 16 The first Lewis-Brown application was filed on September 25, 1964. 7 Two further applications were filed during 1965; both contained essentially the same disclosures as the initial application. After a brief prosecution, the Lewis-Brown patent issued on January 10, 1967, and A.B. Dick became the exclusive licensee under it. 17 After the Lewis-Brown patent issued, Sweet, whose application was pending, copied claims from the Lewis-Brown patent in order to provoke an interference proceeding between himself and Lewis and Brown. After a lengthy interference process, the Patent Office Board of Interferences resolved the question of priority of invention in favor of the Lewis-Brown patent, holding that the Sweet patent application did not disclose a character generator and therefore Sweet could not claim it in hindsight in combination with the droplet-printing apparatus which his application did disclose. 8