Court Opinion

ID: 9450843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:59:26.434346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:28.655323
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge
(dissenting), with whom ALMOND, Judge, joins.
Initially, it should be made clear that what Wiechers is claiming here is, beyond question, a method of doing business. I agree with the majority that the issue of patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is not before us. The only question is whether, on the present record, appellant’s claimed method of doing business would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time appellant invented it.
I likewise agree with the majority regarding appellant’s admission that cheeks and checking accounts are conventional. The Pfleiderer patent discloses these admittedly conventional concepts. The only other aspect of the Pfleiderer patent which has even the remotest bearing on the obviousness of appellant’s claimed method of doing business is the concept of affixing stamps to a check for identification purposes.
To this disclosure, the majority adds several well known facts of business and banking life, and reaches the conclusion that appellant’s claimed method of doing business would have been obvious. Thus the majority mentions “a line of credit”' or an “agreement on the part of the bank to loan money;” “permissive overdrafts with an agreement by the bank to permit installment repayment;” “a periodic installment payment account” and “repayment of loans in installments.”
I am in complete agreement with the' majority that the individual differences between appellant’s claimed method and the certified check patented by Pfleiderer are all fairly conventional steps and, when considered individually and out of context, may be said to be “obvious.”' But it is not obviousness of the differences which section 103 contemplates* but obviousness of the claimed subject, matter as a whole. And appellant’s claimed subject matter as a whole is a unique method of doing business which involves short-circuiting that marvel of modern-day society, the installment charge account, and its ubiquitous companion, the credit card. With appellant’s scheme the consumer need not establish an account with each retailer he wishes to buy from; he need establish but one account, with the bank, and need make periodic installment payments, to but one creditor, the bank.
*612Where, in the sum total of the prior art, including the conventional banking and business practices mentioned by the majority, is there even the slightest suggestion of such an ingenious scheme? I would not, of course, require a reference to meet every “nut and bolt” of the claim. But when, as in the instant case, the art is devoid of the barest suggestion of the very heart of a claimed idea, I feel the step from what the art does show to the holding of obviousness is over-long, and one not countenanced by section 103.
The majority states that “Repayment of loans in installments * * * has become one of the commonest business practices in the United States long prior to appellant’s 1960 filing date.” I agree. And I would not limit it to the United States nor to any time short of remotest antiquity, for money lending is surely one of the world’s oldest businesses. The same is true with the other conventional practices mentioned by the majority— they are hoary with age. Note also the date of Pfleiderer’s patent. In view of this, I ask the “obvious” question: If appellant’s method of doing business is so clearly obvious, why does the record not show it? I would reverse.