Court Opinion

ID: 9455345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:19:32.502778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:33.847298
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge
(dissenting).
Respectfully I dissent, as I believe the court is making a mistake in adopting Per Curiam the commissioner’s report, able as it is, without certain major modifications I deem to be necessary.
I would challenge the conclusions that claim 3 of U.S. Patent No. 2,914,779 (hereinafter, Walker patent), and claims 1-3 of U.S. Patent No. 2,804,633 (hereinafter, Taylor patent), are valid and infringed. Defendant says they are all obvious in view of prior art, and I agree.
In dealing with the Walker patent the commissioner wields a truly well honed scalpel, separating claim 3 from claim 2 which he holds obvious in view of prior art, and 5 and 6 which he says were anticipated. This means that the new invention of claim 3 is of exceedingly narrow scope: not the device of the boarding ramp to enable swimming survivors to board the raft, nor the water ballast pocket at the ramp’s end to stabilize it, but only the placement of the ports for access of sea water to the pocket.
I presume that these rafts would roll as the crests of ocean seas passed under them, communicating greatly enhanced up and down movement to the end of a light, stiff extension, such as the ramp is, whenever it happened to lie at a right angle to the waves. It would be snatched abruptly from the swimmer’s hands, and then would slap down, perhaps beating him upon the head. The device of trapping some sea water at the end of the ramp, to act as ballast, certainly looks like a valid answer, but it is not new, the commissioner tells us. This much being decided upon, it would certainly seem obvious that on the upward roll of the ramp, the ballast water would flow out and not serve its purpose, if the access ports were at the bottom. Any pocket that was going to serve as a tank would have to trap some water on the down roll, that would stay in place on the up roll, and it does not seem to me it takes any great inventive genius to discover that the way to accomplish this is to put the water access ports high on the side of the pocket. Anyone who did not see this would put the spout on the bottom of a tea kettle, if he had a chance. It is evident, also, that trapped air would obstruct the entry of water if the ports were low down. On the other hand, the conditions that made the ballast needful, i. e., heavy *886rolling, would thrust the ramp end under water at the low extremity of the roll, so the pocket would have water in it even before the first swimmer tried to come aboard. If the prior art water ballast pocket did not use something like this idea to trap the water I simply cannot imagine how it was of any use at all. It seems to me that anyone seeking to use the invalid claim 2 to guide him in building a life raft with boarding ramps using water ballast pockets at their ends, would inevitably design the pockets in such a way that they trapped water, and if they did they would be indistinguishable in principle from the pockets of claim 3.
Thus the commissioner’s distinction between claims 2 and 3 I deem to be an excess of refinement and contrary to the Congressional reports quoted with approval in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 14, 86 S.Ct. 684, 692, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966):
* * * An invention which has been made, and which is new in the sense that the same thing has not been made before, may still not be patentable if the difference between the new thing and what was known before is not considered sufficiently great to warrant a patent. * * *
The Taylor patent teaches a way to make the canopy of such a life raft more extensive in horizontal area. Such canopies, of course, are to protect survivors from the effects of the sun and rain in case rescue is not immediate. On the prior art raft the canopy is attached to vertical poles socketed to the inside circumference of the upper circular flotation tube and the raft floor. The canopy sags loosely and therefore must have flapped distressingly in any breeze, yet it is small in relation to the size of the raft. It would not have been probable that such a defective canopy could have been tolerated very long except that, no doubt, the attention of raft designers was focussed on more essential structural features.
The Taylor invention angles the poles outward, fastening them to the tube only, not the floor. Thus the circumference of the canopy is larger, approximating the outer circumference of the raft, giving an “eaves effect.” A spray shield can be kept rolled up around the canopy circumference, or let down and fastened in the “crotch” of the inflatable tubes. In the latter state it would seemingly act as a guy, further stiffening the canopy, but even with it up, the outward incline of the posts reduces the bending moment on them and uses their strength more effectively.
It would, I think, have been obvious to anyone that the prior art canopy was defective and needed improvement as soon as more essential difficulties with the design were deemed overcome. As to how improvement might come, the support of a canopy by outward inclining poles is familiar to anyone who ever attended a Barnum & Bailey circus. With its weather cloth down the involved canopy would appear substantially the same in structure as a circus tent. The principles of physics involved would become intuitively understood, I think, by anyone who had to deal with awnings, canopies, tents, spars, fabrics and ropes. I have a lot of difficulty imagining that anyone who recognized the prior art canopy as defective would not think of trying outward inclination of poles as a remedy. Defendant has, indeed, pointed to the Hallward patent drawings where canopy poles do incline outward but which the commissioner distinguishes on the dubious ground that the raft there patented is not of the inflatable type. This overlooks the fact that inflatable rafts are vessels, just as noninflatable ones are. Thornley & Pitt, et al., v. United States, 48 Cust.Ct. 134 (1962). They are subject to the same laws of physics that govern other vessels. This is not a case of a device having developed in one sphere of activity and being adopted in another one, completely different. I would not dispute that patentable invention might exist in such a case, because persons skilled in one art might not be aware of developments in another wholly distinct one.
*887I would dismiss the action because the inventions, after cutting away what was anticipated, represent advances on the prior art which are too small for notice under the patent laws, and would be tried by anyone who recogni2;ed the defects of prior art and wanted to experiment with the obvious means of correcting them.
SKELTON, Judge, joins in the foregoing dissenting opinion.