Opinion ID: 507304
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Equitable Safeguards as to Enforcement of '710

Text: 3 Four Star was sued and found to infringe the '658 and '471 patents, relating to certain automobile luggage racks, in an earlier action appealed to this court. Bott v. Four Star Corp., No. 83-1080 (Fed.Cir. March 21, 1984) (unpublished). Four Star then altered its design to avoid infringement of these patents. Thereafter, the '710 patent issued in 1985 and contained claims broad enough to encompass Four Star's redesigned racks. The '710 patent resulted from the seventh application in a series of continuation applications, all based on the identical disclosure and relying for priority on an application filed in 1974. The applications on which the '658 and '471 patents issued were part of this string of continuations. 4 Four Star contends that patents based on a series of continuation applications should be subject to equitable safeguards if they issue two years after a patent issues on the original disclosure. In support, Four Star relies on Webster Elec. Co. v. Splitdorf Elec. Co., 264 U.S. 463 (1924). See also Crown Cork & Seal Co. v. Ferdinand Gutmann Co., 304 U.S. 159 (1937). 5 We are not persuaded by Four Star's position because these Supreme Court cases preceded the enactment of the Patent Act of 1952 (Title 35 of the United States Code). Continuation applications are authorized by 35 U.S.C. Sec. 120 (Supp.III 1985). Section 120 does not contain any time limit on broadened claims similar to the two-year time limit applicable to reissue proceedings under 35 U.S.C. Sec. 251 (1982). The latter section expressly provides that a reissued patent shall not be granted enlarging the scope of the claims of a patent unless it is applied for within two years of the grant of the original patent. Had the legislature intended any such time limit to apply to continuation applications it could have included a similar provision in section 120. Moreover, we have not been directed to anything in the legislative history of the 1952 Act that supports Four Star's contention that the equitable considerations discussed in the Supreme Court cases relied on by Four Star should have continued viability. 6 Accordingly, we are not persuaded by Four Star's argument that this court should adopt equitable safeguards to limit continuation applications when the Congress gave no indication that it intended to so do. See In re Hogan, 559 F.2d 595, 604 n. 13, 194 USPQ 527, 536 n. 13 (CCPA 1977) (The 24 years of pendency herein may be decried, but a limit upon continuing applications is a matter of policy for the Congress, not for us.); In re Henriksen, 399 F.2d 253, 262, 158 USPQ 224, 231 (CCPA 1968) (application depended on another filed twenty years earlier). 7