Court Opinion

ID: 9639052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:03:08.102678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:11.892469
License: Public Domain

Upon Application for Rehearing.
PER CURIAM.
It is said that the opinion mistook the position of defendant below in respect to the relation of the two patents in suit; that defendant did not contend for an inference of noninfringement of the process patent from “the fact that the product patent is held not infringed”; but that defendant’s contention was intended to be this: “The broader product claims having been rejected as being merely the inevitable product of certain prior art processes, and this rejection having been acquiesced in by Fulton, obviously the process claims must be similarly construed to distinguish from those same pri- or art procesas, or else they are themselves anticipated.”
We cannot agree with this contention. It is true the process and "product patents were eopending as divisional applications; but this does not necessarily affect their mutual independence. The Patent Office held that the product described in the broader terms Fulton first used was old, because it would have been the inevitable result of an old and known process, whereupon Fulton limited his product claim to avoid this rejection. Not only can no technical estoppel be carried from one application into another associated one, but there is in this situation not even an implied admission that the old process cited was the same as the process which Fulton was broadly claiming in the other application. A product is normally capable of resulting from different and varying processes ; it is not new if it has theretofore been produced by any process; the identity of product does not necessarily indicate identity of process ; and hence Fulton’s process claims must stand or «fall upon their merits as compared with th© prior art. We are holding in Perkins Glue Co. v. Holland Furniture Co., 18 F.(2d) 387, opinion this day announced, that a limiting disclaimer as to a method claim does not necessarily limit a product claim of the same patent.
The rehearing application is denied.