Opinion ID: 208706
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Goodyear Dental cases

Text: The en banc court also states that its new ruling is supported by two cases relating to a patent on the use of vulcanized rubber to form a plate for holding dentures, Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., 93 U.S. (3 Otto) 486, 23 L.Ed. 952 (1876), and Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co. v. Davis, 102 U.S. (12 Otto) 222, 26 L.Ed. 149 (1880). Review of these cases reveals no support for the en banc court's statement of their holdings. The claim at issue was: The plate of hard rubber or vulcanite, or its equivalent, for holding artificial teeth, or teeth and gums, substantially as described. Davis, 102 U.S. (12 Otto) at 223. The claim was written in the then-standard format of incorporating the description in the specification through the phrase substantially as described. This was not a product-by-process or product-of-the-process claim at all, for the claim contains no process distinction or limitation, but simply refers to the description in the specification. Nonetheless, the en banc majority appears to state that these cases mean that the Supreme Court requires that all claims for products whose method of production is set forth in the specificationas is required by the description and enablement requirementcannot be infringed unless that method is used. That is not what the Goodyear Dental cases said. The Court referred to the position of Goodyear Dental Vulcanite that its patent covered all dental plates made of vulcanized rubber, and held, upon reviewing the specification and the prior art, that the process of manufacture was what distinguished this dental plate from the prior art dental plates, and concluded: The invention, then, is a product or manufacture made in a defined manner. It is not a product alone, separated from the process by which it is created. Smith, 93 U.S. (3 Otto) at 493. Were the claim not limited to this process, the Court concluded that the claim would not have been patentable. See id. at 492 (holding that if the patent were for a mere substitution of vulcanite for other materials, which had previously been employed as a base for artificial sets of teeth then it constituted no invention). Four years later, considering the same patent in Davis, the Court emphasized that the claim was limited to use of vulcanized rubber or its equivalent, and held that since the accused infringer made its dental plate with celluloid, there could not be infringement. See 102 U.S. (12 Otto) at 228-30. The court today cites these cases as definitive of the interpretation of claims with process elements, although the only process referent is the phrase substantially as described. This flawed reasoning was disposed of in 1890 in the classic Robinson on Patents, and until now has not reappeared: In stating Claims certain phrases are frequently employed to which a special importance seems to be attached by applicants. Among these are the phrase substantially as described and others of the same meaning. These phrases import the same thing when used in a Claim as when elsewhere employed. They are neither necessary nor technical. The reference they make to the Description is always implied, and relates only to the essential features of the invention as therein delineated. They add nothing, therefore, to the certainty of the Claim, nor do they detract from it unless the claimant carelessly inserts them as a substitute for a more clear and definite statement of his invention. II W.C. Robinson, Robinson on Patents 517 (1890) (footnotes omitted).