Court Opinion

ID: 9692831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:07:45.361325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:37.226966
License: Public Domain

MADDEN, Judge
(dissenting).
I think the Government’s structure did not infringe the plaintiff’s patent. The essence of the plaintiff’s discovery is that cell-concrete, though necessarily weaker than ordinary structural concrete, may, if mixed in the right proportions be light enough to be a good insulating material, but heavy enough to bear the weight of the pipe without being crushed by that weight. The plaintiff’s discovery thus makes it possible to eliminate the metal roller or rocker supports for the pipe which were thought to be necessary when the pipes were surrounded by a light substance such as mineral wool or cell-concrete.
The court’s opinion says that there was skepticism in the trade as to whether the plaintiff’s discovery was practicable, i. e., whether if the cell-concrete was really made light enough to make good insulation, it would bear the weight of the pipes without crushing. If the Government’s installation operates satisfactorily for 100 years, it will still prove *959nothing as to the practicability of the plaintiff’s device. In it, the cell-concrete around the pipes does not bear the weight of the pipes. The pipes are rested on pre-cast structural concrete blocks at intervals of not more than ten feet. The opinion of the court speaks of these blocks as temporary supports. I see nothing temporary about them. They supported the pipe when it had nothing else around it but air; they would continue to support it if it had nothing else around it but mineral wool or saw-dust. When the cell-concrete was poured, the hard concrete blocks were embedded in it and will always be there. If the skeptics should, after all, turn out to be right, and installations resting only on cell-concrete should fail, after years of use, the Government’s structure will not fail, because the pipes do not rest on the cell-concrete. They are merely surrounded by it. The most that can be said is that they would rest on it if they did not rest on something else, which they do rest on.
The decision of the court seems to me to say that if there is an old, unpatented method of accomplishing a result, and a new, patented method, one is guilty of infringement if he continues to use the old method when, in the opinion of the patentee and the court, he could have accomplished the result by using the new method. If that is infringement at all it should be designated as constructive infringement, infringement not by use of the patented method, but by resort to a legal fiction. I see no good reason for resort to the fiction.