Opinion ID: 208706
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Plummer v. Sargent

Text: The en banc court also relies on Plummer v. Sargent, 120 U.S. 442, 7 S.Ct. 640, 30 L.Ed. 737 (1887), which again provides no support for my colleagues' thesis. This case again illustrates the Court's practice of reviewing what the patentee stated he invented as set forth in the specification in light of the prior art. The claim in Plummer was for a new manufacture, substantially as described: What I claim and desire to procure by letters patent is the new manufacture hereinabove described, consisting of iron ornamented in imitation of bronze by the application of oil and heat, substantially as described. Id. at 445, 7 S.Ct. 640. The trial court had found non-infringement because the defendant had used a prior art process for bronzing iron. This prior process was work of F.W. Brocksieper, an employee of the defendant's predecessor company. The Supreme Court affirmed, stating that the claims were limited to the process described in the specification: It seems necessarily to follow from this view either that the Tucker patents are void by reason of anticipation practiced by Brocksieper, or that the patented process and product must be restricted to exactly what is described.... Id. at 449, 7 S.Ct. 640. The Court thus limited the claims to the process described by the patentee, not because of any rule about limiting a product to how it was made in the specification, but to sustain validity of the patent in view of the Brocksieper prior art. The decision in Plummer is unrelated to any rule of claim construction based on whether process terms are included in the claim. These nineteenth-century cases do not relate to the en banc court's new universal rule of claim construction, whereby all product claims having process terms are treated as process claims, whatever the nature of the product, whatever the need for process descriptors, or any other factor that precedent shows to be relevant to the exception that is here at issue as to the use of and construction of such claims. Nor do any more recent Court cases.