Opinion ID: 208706
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Cochrane v. BASF

Text: The en banc opinion relies primarily on Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, 111 U.S. 293, 4 S.Ct. 455, 28 L.Ed. 433 (1884) ( BASF ), even though my colleagues acknowledge that the product in that case was the well-known dye alizarine. The patent before the Court was a reissue patent that claimed artificial alizarine in the following way: Artificial alizarine, produced by either of the methods herein described, or by any other method which will produce a like result. The Court held that since alizarine was a known product, the claim was limited to the patentee's two processes, stating: It was an old article. While a new process for producing it was patentable, the product itself could not be patented, even though it was a product made artificially for the first time, in contradistinction from being eliminated from the madder root. Calling it artificial alizarine did not make it a new composition of matter, and patentable as such, by reason of its having been prepared, artificially, for the first time, from anthracite, if it was set forth as alizarine, a well-known substance. Wood-Paper Patent, 23 Wall. 566, 593 [23 L.Ed. 31 (1874) ]. There was therefore no foundation for reissue No. 4,321, for the product, because, on the description given, no patent for the product could have been taken out originally. 111 U.S. at 311-12, 4 S.Ct. 455. The Court accordingly limited the claim to the two processes described in the patent, and in the portion of BASF quoted by my colleagues, the Court discussed the proofs needed to show infringement: [U]nless it is shown that the process of [the specification] was followed to produce the defendants' article, or unless it is shown that the article could not be produced by any other process, the defendants' article cannot be identified as the product of the process of [the specification]. Nothing of the kind is shown. Id. at 310, 4 S.Ct. 455. The Court did not state, or imply, despite my colleagues' contrary theory, that a claim to a new and complex product that is of necessity defined and distinguished by the process by which it was made, can never be infringed unless that specific process is practiced. There was no issue in BASF of a product that could not be defined without reference to how it was made. The BASF Court, providing guidance, remarked on the importance of independent description of a patented product, in the following sentence cited by my colleagues: Every patent for a product or composition of matter must identify it so that it can be recognized aside from the description of the process for making it, or else nothing can be held to infringe the patent which is not made by that process. Id. at 310, 4 S.Ct. 455. This statement is indeed the general rule, as stated by the Patent Commissioner several years later in Ex parte Painter. However, BASF did not present the situation for which the expedient of necessity was created, for as the Court stated, the invention was a process for preparing alizarine, not as a new substance prepared for the first time, but as the substance already known as alizarine, to be prepared, however, by the new process, which process is to be the subject of the patent, and is the process of preparing the known product alizarine from anthracine. Id. at 308-09, 4 S.Ct. 455. This was not an instance of a new product describable only in terms of its process of manufacture. The BASF decision lends no support to today's en banc rule that every product claim that mentions a process step is always restricted to that process, with no exception, no expedient, no preservation of the distinctions among forms of claim based on the nature of the invention.