Court Opinion

ID: 9452323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:37:12.729738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:10.166254
License: Public Domain

CASTLE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I find myself unable to agree with the conclusion of the majority that the District Court applied an incorrect test for nonobviousness because “the ‘unusual and surprising result’ as a controlling factor has gone with the ‘flash of creative genius’.” I cannot reconcile such a conclusion with the recent pronouncement in United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 51, 86 S.Ct. 708, 714, 15 L.Ed.2d 572, that:
“We conclude the Adams battery was also nonobvious. As we have seen, the operating characteristics of the Adams battery have been shown to have been unexpected and to have far surpassed then-existing wet batteries.”
Adams recognizes “unexpectedness”, which can be equated with “unusual or surprising” as an appropriate factor in the determination of nonobviousness. The converse appears to be implicit, and I am unaware of anything which impairs the continuing validity of Great Atlantic *236& Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152, 71 S.Ct. 127, 130, 95 L.Ed. 162, insofar as it approved recourse to the “unusual or su-prising consequences” factor by stating:
“This case is wanting in any unusual or surprising consequences from the unification of the elements here concerned, and there is nothing to indicate that the lower courts scrutinized the claims in the light of this rather severe test.”