Opinion ID: 422278
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Level Of Ordinary Skill In The Pertinent Art

Text: 32 The parties do not seriously contest the level of ordinary skill in the shredder art at the time the invention was made. Based on the trial testimony as a whole, it is safe to conclude that this level of ordinary skill in the shredder art would involve a high school education with some practical experience, or an engineering degree with no experience. It appears that those who were engaged in the relevant art during 1974-75 were at or above the level of ordinary skill but nonetheless were unable to solve the problems of unpredictable reversal and gearstripping that beset shredders at that time. Harold Groves, who was with the Williams Company and was assigned to design the Williams shredder, stated that when the shredder project was assigned to him he had four or five years of experience designing shredder equipment but that it was still a black art to him. Mr. Cunningham worked from August 1973 until mid-1975 as a senior project engineer at the Coats Company to design a tire shredder, but the Cunningham shredder project was a commercial failure and of limited reliability. Finally, Bob Donovan, who had developed the Teledyne shredder, was an engineer with at least two years of experience in designing shear-type shredders, but was unable to solve the various technical problems presented.