Opinion ID: 208706
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: General Electric v. Wabash

Text: My colleagues also cite General Electric Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp., 304 U.S. 364, 58 S.Ct. 899, 82 L.Ed. 1402 (1938), although the relevance of this case is, again, not apparent, for it involved no product-by-process claims, but rather claims that recite the properties of the product. A typical claim is claim 25, which describes an electric lamp filament composed of tungsten grains of a size and shape that prevents sagging of the filament: 25. A filament for electric incandescent lamps or other devices, composed substantially of tungsten and made up mainly of a number of comparatively large grains of such size and contour as to prevent substantial sagging and offsetting during a normal or commercially useful life for such a lamp or other device. Id. at 368, 58 S.Ct. 899. The Court held this claim invalid on its face for failing to provide a distinct and definite statement of what he claims to be new, and to be his invention. Id. at 369, 58 S.Ct. 899. The Court stated that the description of the grains as of such size and contour as to prevent substantial sagging and offsetting was inadequate as a description of the structural characteristics of the grains. Id. at 370, 58 S.Ct. 899. The Court also criticized the use of functional language in the claim, stating that such terms were too indefinite to provide clear guidance. Id. at 371, 58 S.Ct. 899. There was no issue of whether process steps in the claims were regarded as limiting, for there were no process steps in the claims. Instead, the Court stated that even the implicit inclusion of process steps could not save the claim, because the description of the process in the specification was inadequate: Even assuming that definiteness may be imparted to the product claim by that part of the specification which purportedly details only a method of making the product, the description of the Pacz process is likewise silent as to the nature of the filament product. Id. at 373, 58 S.Ct. 899. The Court held the patent invalid for lack of a distinct and definite description of the invention, for the court doubted whether one who discovers or invents a product he knows to be new will ever find it impossible to describe some aspect of its novelty. Id. Whatever the inadequacies in the Pacz description of his invention, the Court's optimistic view of scientific capability cannot be deemed to have barred all recourse to the rule of necessity when it is warranted, or to have voided the ensuing seventy-one years of Patent Office and judicial recognition of this pragmatic expedient. No Supreme Court case discussed the problems of complexity and structural analysis that warrant this expedient, or created a legal solution to these problems. It is inappropriate, unsupported by law or precedent, and contrary to the purposes of patent systems, for this court now to rule that such products cannot be patented as products.