Opinion ID: 104637
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: process claims.

Text: All process claims were held invalid by the District Court; those numbered 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9, because they make no specific reference to the essential chemical constituents of the welding composition to be used in the claimed welding process, a conclusion with which we agree. Process claim 2 was held invalid for the reason applicable to flux claims 24 and 26, with which we also agree. Others, namely 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, and composition claim 27 were held invalid because they erroneously import that the sole conductive medium through which electric current passes from the electrode to the base metal is the welding composition, which is in a molten state, and that no electric arc phenomenon is present. The court found that the procedural steps in the process taught by the patent are identical in all respects with those followed in prior automatic electric welding processes and that the only invention or discovery resides in the use of a different welding composition. It sustained the patent for the composition, as we have shown, but denied its validity insofar as it claimed the old procedure. The trial court gave extensive consideration to the process claims. It agreed that a radically new process would have been discovered if it could be said that the electric current passed between the electrode and the base metal through a welding composition in a liquid state and that no electric arc is present. All of the previous art had used the electric arc. But with full appreciation of the critical nature of the inquiry and after long litigation of the technology of the art, the court concluded that no such finding of departure from the prior art could be made and said that the evidence is persuasive that no such basic difference in phenomena is present in the Jones method. The District Court reinforced its conclusion by pointing out that the inventors themselves initially did not conceive their invention to embody any such radical departure from known phenomena and that their first application for a patent was replete with references to the presence and use of an electric arc in the new method. It was only after they had assigned their rights to the respondent that the suggestion of a basically new phenomenon, other than an arc, was made. Just what happens in the Jones method admits of controversy, for there is no visual evidence of an electric arc after the welding operation commences because what actually occurs between the electrode and the metal base is hidden from view by the flux. The court concluded that it is impossible to say with complete certainty that there is not an arc and one of the plaintiff's expert witnesses gave substantial support to the idea that the arc is still present, although it is shielded by the flux in the Jones patent. The same deference is due to the findings of the trial court which overturn claims as to those which sustain them. Technicians may and probably will continue to debate with plausible arguments on each side as to what this obscure process really is. But the record in this case, while not establishing to a certainty that the findings are right, fall far short of convincing us that they are clearly erroneous. We think that the rules that govern review entitle the trial court's conclusions to prevail and that the process claims are invalid under the statute.