Court Opinion

ID: 9640155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:59:02.169145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:16:51.907628
License: Public Domain

SIMONS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I regret that I am unable to concur in the conclusions reached on either the mechanical or the design patent. As to, the former, the inventor but combined the old toaster with a conventional tray. It is true that these structures are rigidly connected, but together they perform no unitary or joint function any more than do the pencil and eraser in the classic case of Reckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U.S. 347, 357, 23 L.Ed. 719, the stoker and blower ran in our recent case of Detroit Stoker Co. v. Brownell, 6 Cir., 89 F.2d 422, or the highway torch and flame-guarding cap lately considered by the Supreme Court in Toledo Pressed Steel Co. v. Standard Parts, Inc., 59 S.Ct. 897, 83 L,Ed. 1334, decided May 29, 1939. In this respect the claims but describe an aggregation and not a true combination and are therefore invalid.
Nor can I perceive invention in altering the shape of the conventionally combined structure in response to a well defined popular trend in all the arts for “streamlining.” We quite recently pointed out (Univis Corp. v. Rips, 6 Cir., 104 F.2d 749, 752) in respect to another art that where the possibilities for variations in shaping and positioning are innumerable not every fresh effort1 which results in a new shape or position can be said to amount to invention.
It is quite novel doctrine to hold that the fact that appellant has seen fit to use the device described by the patent in; suit strengthens the presumption of patentability however such fact may' give tribute to utility or beyond péradventure establish infringement. If it should' prevail there would be few with temerity to challenge a patent however obvious its invalidity or ■to defend themselves or the public against -'an improvidently granted monopoly. The precise reverse of this is, of course, true', for one who reproduces a patented device proclaims to the world his disbelief in the validity of the patent, his' purpose not to be circumscribed by it, and invites a suit for infringement so that validity • may be adjudged, and the closer the reproduction .the plainer is his challenge to validity.
As to the design patent, I doubt its validity. In a careful consideration of the statute in Applied Arts Corporation v. Grand Rapids Metalcraft Corp., 6 Cir., 67 F.2d 428, 431, we expressed the view that to warrant the granting of a design ¡patent something more was required than merely conventional design made imperative by elements tha,t are combined and the purpose of a device. I adhere to that view. Configuration responding merely to function is not of itself a contribution to the .decorative arts, for as was said in Standard Computing Scale Co. v. Detroit Auto*561matic Scale Co., 6 Cir., 265 F. 281, “These designs are both for single column computing scales, and are of necessity similar in general construction.”
If there be mechanical invention in combining a toaster and tray with lower specific gravity than was usual, then the general physical appearance of the device is but a necessary response to this inventive form, and a design patent for a configuration that may not be avoided but results in double patenting, for one may not conceive of this general configuration being achieved by any combination of elements other than those described. If, however, the invention of the design patent resides in its ornamentation and the more precise details of line and curve, then tested by the eye of the “ordinary observer,” Gorham Mfg. Co. v. White, 14 Wall. 511, 81 U.S. 511, 530, 20 L.Ed. 731, as we understood his perceptiveness in the Applied Arts case, there is no similarity and therefore no infringement, for except as the patented and accused devices are of necessity similar in general construction, they are as dissimilar as were the scales in Standard Computing Scale Co. v. Detroit Automatic Scale Co., supra, or the cigar lighters in Applied Arts Corp. v. Metalcraft Co., supra.
I think the case should be reversed.