Court Opinion

ID: 9639647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:42:43.91158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:20.653754
License: Public Domain

*645L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Federal courts have said at times that the successful plaintiff in a patent suit might so misuse his decree that they would vacate it [Alliance Securities Co. v. De Vilbiss Mfg. Co., 41 F.(2d) 668, (C. C. A. 6); Asbestos Shingle, etc., Co. v. Johns-Manville Co. (C. C.) 189 F. 611; De Forest Radio, etc., Co. v. Radio Corporation (D. C.) 4 F.(2d) 134] ; but, so far as I can find, they have only once acted upon the doctrine [H. W. Peters Co. v. McDonald (D. C.) 5 F. Supp. 692], However, in the closely analogous situation of a bill to enjoin a patentee from misrepresenting his rights, when he refuses to test them in court, there have been a number of successful efforts. Farquhar Co. v. National Harrow Co., 102 F. 714, 49 L. R. A. 755 (C. C. A. 3); Adriance, Platt & Co. v. National Harrow Co., 121 F. 827 (C. C. A. 2); Racine Paper Goods Co. v. Dittgen, 171 F. 631 (C. C. A. 7). This doctrine appears to take its source from Judge Blodgett’s decree in Emack v. Kane (C. C.) 34 F. 46, and is uniformly subject to the condition that the defendant must be asserting what he knows to be false; he is allowed to press his rights and to threaten the trade, so long as he really believes his claims to be sound. Virtue v. Creamery Package Mfg. Co., 179 F. 113, 120 (C. C. A. 8); Oil Conservation Engineering Co. v. Brooks Engineering Co., 52 F.(2d) 783 (C. C. A. 6). In the light of these decisions I agree that, just as before adjudication a putative infringer may stop a dishonest use of a patentee’s claims, so an adjudicated infringer may suspend a decree against him, and perhaps vacate it, if the patentee deliberately misstate its scope and result. Short of that courts will not interfere in such disputes any more than in any other touting or puffing by merchants; they do not sit as censors upon the moderation, good taste, or even truthfulness of advertisements, trade circulars, or the like.
So the question here is merely whether the plaintiffs have used the decree with conscious knowledge that it did not go so far as they asserted. Except for the statements of their salesmen, of which more in a moment, I can find not even the proverbial scintilla of evidence to that effect. The language which Reilly, the defendants’ president, put in Ar-onson’s mouth, though Aronson himself gave another version, may perhaps be understood as threatening the defendants’ business with extinction, but in that I can see nothing unlawful. A monopoly ex vi termini means a power to stop others’ activity; it is not unlawful to use it ruthlessly, or to proclaim that you will press your advantage to the full, be the consequences what they may; it may not be desirable to give such powers to individuals at all, but I submit it is idle to give them and wince at their exercise. Certainly courts have no warrant for treating such a threat or its realization as unlawful, else they must themselves forbear the indiscriminate use of injunctions as a remedy for patent infringement. I know of no doctrine which requires, or indeed even permits, them so to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.
As to the wires and letters which the plaintiffs sent out to their salesmen and to the trade, they too seem to me blameless. They are challenged, as I understand it, for three reasons: First, they included “automatic” lighters generally; second, they covered combinations of the patented lighters with cigarette eases, trays and so on; third, they included lighters “of similar construction.” The defendants had been making two styles of lighter which were called “Evans automatic” and “Evans roller-bearing”; we had enjoined both. Two other companies had been making “automatic” lighters, the “Golden Arrow” and the “Marathon”; the plaintiffs got consent decrees against each of these. The name “automatic” was used in the trade to distinguish a lighter in which the same mechanism moved at once the abrading wheel and the snuffer, from one in which the two were disconnected. I cannot find anything in the letters which the plaintiffs sent out, asserting directly or by implication that the decree covered all kinds of “automatic” lighters, assuming that there were upon the market others than those enjoined. The text of these documents is set out in the main opinion, and it hardly seems necessary to debate it in detail; if I construe it wrongly, that will appear by inspection.
The plaintiffs did try to stop the sales of “sets” and “combinations” containing .the lighters; they went further, they demanded and got statements from the books of some of the defendants’ customers for an accounting for the sales of such sets. I can see nothing wrong in either. At times the lighter was incorporated into the top of a cigarette ease.; at times the lighter, the ease, a tray and other pieces of the same pattern were sold together. It was ■ entirely proper for the plaintiffs „to stop the sale of any set of which the lighter was a piece, and it is not likely that the other pieces could be sold separately; but if they could, I earn find no claim of a right to stop the sale of any pieces which did not contain *646the lighter. As to the profits, they'are notoriously difficult to estimate in patent ac-countings. How much in these cases they depended upon the lighter nobody could say in advance; some more or less arbitrary division was inevitable, and it was reasonable enough to start with finding out what had been the profits on the sets as a whole. Finally, although the decree did, and indeed could, cover only the lighters which were then before us, it validated the claims, and they were couched in general terms which we had read somewhat broadly. Perhaps we were wrong; in the decision we are handing down herewith, we have limited the word, “manual” — rightly in my judgment; but surely the plaintiffs were justified in supposing that they had won more than a Pyrrhic victory. This they expressed by saying that the decree covered lighters of “similar construction”, and I cannot see why they should have said less. I agree that the phrase was vague, but so was the fact; nobody knew or could know how far the courts would extend the claims, but certainly there were some “similar constructions” that they would cover. Unless one reads any or all these statements with a jaundiced eye, I own I am unable to comprehend how we can spell out of them anything sinister; certainly they contained nothing which can justify the charge of a consciously dishonest use of the decree.
The salesmen probably did go further; it was inherently likely that they would, being a zealous folk, not sensitive, and perhaps not scrupulous, in the use of words. Some of the customers probably understood them to say that the plaintiffs could enjoin the sale of all “automatic” lighters; though how far they were justified in that understanding is not so clear. Some did not; they knew what the ease had been about, and that the plaintiffs had prevailed over the Evans lighters and these alone. But I am not much concerned with what the salesmen did say, and arguendo I can accept the defendants’ version on that. My brothers believe, since the plaintiffs were liable for their salesmen’s torts, that their declarations, made within the scope of, their authority, charged their employer’s conscience and barred this suit. I do not; and that is really the only importance of our decision beyond the interests of the immediate parties. Whenever the question has come up, it has been held that immoral conduct to be relevant, must touch and taint the plaintiff personally; that the acts of his agents, though imputed to him legally, do not impugn his conscience vicariously. Vulcan Detinning Co. v. American Can Co., 72 N. J. Eq. 387, 391, 392, 67 A. 339, 12 L. R. A. (N. S.) 102; Hedman Mfg. Co. v. Todd Protectograph Co., 265 F. 273, 278 (C. C. A. 7); Associated Press v. International News Service (D. C.) 240 F. 983, 989. Cf. Joseph Schlitz v. Houston Ice & Brewing Co., 241 F. 817, 824 (C. C. A. 5). On principle, so far as there is any principle about the whole matter, it seems to me that a plaintiff should not be so charged. The doctrine is confessedly derived from the unwillingness of a court, originally and still nominally one of conscience, to give its peculiar relief to a suitor who in the very controversy has so conducted himself as to shock the moral sensibilities of the judge. It has nothing to do with the rights or liabilities of the parties; indeed the defendant who invokes it need not be damaged, and the court may even raise it sua sponte. The reasons which justify imputing liability to a principal for his agent’s acts, whatever they are, have nothing in common with such a notion. It would be monstrous that a man’s conscience should bear the sins of those he employs, however liable he may be for their acts, and a doctrine which stands upon moral wrongdoing must clear itself of that confusion, or adopt another form. While it stands upon the court’s repugnance to the suitor personally, it must confine itself to his personal delinquencies.
A last argument is this. The plaintiffs upon the trial of this suit had argued, and put on an expert witness to swear, that the phrase, “manual pressure,” in the claims presupposed a cjireet connection between the smoker’s thumb and the abrading wheel and snuffer; and they distinguished some of the prior art for this reason. Availing themselves of this, the defendants got out a new lighter, the “Trig-a-lite,’.’ with a spring interposed, which we are to-day saying escapes the claims (70 F.(2d) 639). The plaintiffs told the trade that this new lighter fell within our decision in the case at bar, and upon the trial of the “Trig-a-lite” suit they took the position that the interposed spring made no difference. It is now argued that this use of the decree in the trade, and this position taken in the “Trig-a-lite” suit, were so inconsistent with what had gone before as to be dishonest, and so dishonest as to destroy this decree. But there is not the least reason to suppose ■ that what the plaintiffs told the trade, they had any doubt that they could make good. Besides they advised their correspondents that it was their lawyers’ opinion on which they relied and they sent along a copy of our opinion to back it up. It was the claims that we had there held valid, not *647tile reasoning of the expert, and whether we would hold that “manual pressure” precluded any interposed spring could be known only after it had been .tried out. The appeal was itself „an evidence of good faith, was prosecuted with every evidence of conviction, and undoubtedly represented the honest belief of the plaintiffs and their counsel. Indeed the result we have reached was by no means inevitable, given the correctness of all we had said before. Even a superficial acquaintance with the uncertainties of patent litigation provides one with tolerance for more glaring changes of position. That part of the argument which goes to the conduct of the “Trig-a-lite” suit itself, has even less basis. The plaintiffs put forward their new interpretation in open court before a judge, in the presence of an opponent who had access to all that had gone before, and who at once perceived, and made use of the inconsistency. The chances for any overreaching were fanciful; the moral standard, which should visit upon a patentee forfeiture of the suit for such a lapse, if it be a lapse at all, is beyond my knowledge. In general I think that the plaintiffs, throughout their “campaign,” kept within permissible limits of conduct; and while such relentless competition is not indeed an edifying spectacle, neither 'ide appears in the record as freshly come from Aready.