Court Opinion

ID: 9448316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:31:16.839606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:22.616744
License: Public Domain

CASTLE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the result reached by Judge Duffy in his opinion. But I would affirm the District Court’s denial of summary judgment for the defendant on the basis that the change here made in the claims by the reissue patent, unlike the change considered in Crane Packing Company v. Spitfire Tool & Machine Co., 7 Cir., 276 F.2d 271, did not preempt additional subject matter by a broadening or enlargement of the scope of the claims of the original patent. Here there was but a minor change in dimension of an offset surface — a feature embraced by the original claims. The change was not novel nor did it produce novelty. The offset continued to perform the same function in the same manner.
The reissue claims here involved are not within the scope of the teaching of Spitfire. In that case there was a broadening or enlargement of the original claims to incorporate an “overhanging” wear ring to control lap contour. The novelty of the reissue claims was contended to be the added “overhanging” feature of the wear ring. In Spitfire we stated (p. 274):
*53“Claims 11 to 14, inclusive, were held invalid under 35 U.S.C.A. § 102 (b) because the device was on sale and in use more than one year prior to the filing of the reissue application. The common thread running through claims 11 to 14, inclusive, and contended by plaintiffs to constitute their novel feature, is the “overhanging” rotating wear ring which controls lap contour by overhanging one edge of the annular lap by an amount which takes into consideration the type of article being lapped, and the desired contour. * * * ”
It was conceded that the device incorporating the overhanging ring feature was on sale and in public use more than one year prior to the application for the reissue patent. We agreed with the holding of the learned Chief Judge of the District Court that the reissue claims were therefore invalid, and stated (p. 274):
“We agree with the District Court’s conclusion that although a reissue application enlarging claims may be filed within two years from the grant of the original patent it is, nevertheless, subject to the conditions proscribed by § 102(b) which are by reference incorporated in § 251.”
In so doing we pointed out that (p. 274):
“The language incorporating provisions of the title relating to applications in the section authorizing and governing reissue patents is an entirely new provision added by the Patent Act of 1952. It was not contained in the previous statute (R.S. § 4916, 35 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 64). Its scope is not limited to formal or procedural, as distinguished from substantive, matters. * * * ”
The holding in Spitfire of course is restricted to the issue the Court had before it — an attempted broadening or enlargement of claims through reissue despite public use and sale of the device incorporating the feature added by the broadened claims more than one year prior to the application for the reissue patent.
Judge Duffy’s opinion recognizes that the section of the Patent Code of 1952 (35 U.S.C.A. § 251) which states the conditions upon which a reissue patent may be issued introduced for the first time an express statutory recognition of broadened reissues and that this entirely new provision restricted the period for application for such a reissue to within two years from the grant of the original patent. It was as a part of this presumably deliberate congressional action that there was added to this same section the complementary new provision that “[t]he provisions of this title relating to applications for patent shall be applicable to applications for reissue of a patent * * * ”. And one of these provisions (35 U.S.C.A. § 102(b)) requires denial of an application if the invention was on sale or in public use in this country more than one year prior to the date of application.
I perceive it to be abundantly clear that Congress in extending statutory approval to the principle of “broadened” reissues sought at the same time to fix definite limits to circumscribe the privilege of such a reissue. And as to such “broadened” reissues the change Congress so effected is substantive — -it concerns the conditions under which broadened reissue patents are to be issued.
I find nothing strained or strange in ascribing to Congress the intent it literally expressed. Why should not broadened reissue claims be tested in a manner similar to original claims? Surely it is not without foundation in the public interest that they be so tested — and the test prescribed does permit a one-year period of grace to the patentee to extend the domain he originally preempted by his claims even in the face of public disclosure, sale or use.
Insofar as reissues other than broadened reissues are concerned the restrictions imposed by the two-year period for application and the ban of § 102(b) have no application. The two-year limi*54tation for applications is expressly confined to applications for enlargement of the scope of claims. And all invention defined by the original claims is protected by the original patent and it is only a reissue application for broadened or enlarged scope of claims and consequent preemption of additional subject matter which must fall before the interdict of § 102(b). And Spitfire stands for no more than this.
But in face of the legislative history of the section and the context in which the two entirely new provisions were added Judge Duffy’s opinion sees no congressional design to effectuate any substantive change but merely intent to assure that reissue applications be accorded the same procedural formalities in the patent office as are prescribed for applications for original patents. And in support of such emasculated interpretation of the entirely new provisions added to the section Judge Duffy harkens to a contention advanced by “distinguished patent counsel” 1 2that the doctrine of Spitfire requires that no reissue patent of any kind be issued on an application made more than one year after issuance of the original patent because the original patent constitutes a publication. I submit that this is a specious argument — a complete non sequitur. Whatever false lustre it may have served to radiate when earlier advanced in an attack made on the rationale of Spitfire, cloaked in the anonymity of a nom de plume, and published in a metropolitan law bulletin, has since been perceptibly dulled by the United States Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in Spitfire (363 U.S. 820, 80 S.Ct. 1259, 4 L.Ed.2d 1517) after first having granted the American Patent Law Association leave to file a brief as amicus curiae in which the same argument waa made.2
I cannot join with Judge Duffy in his criticism and rejection of Spitfire. I adhere to the view that Spitfire correctly appraises and applies § 251 in the light of the entirely new provisions added by Congress in 1952. And I find nothing in Spitfire which is inconsistent with our later decision in England v. Deere & Company, 7 Cir., 284 F.2d 460, p. 464 where Judge Duffy’s opinion aptly characterized the objective of the reissue claims to be to reflect corrections made of defects in the original specifications. There the reissue claims were directed to> the same inventive combination as the original claims with the relationship of the elements merely being described somewhat differently. In England the District Court refers to the reissue claims there involved (182 F.Supp. 133, 138) as:
“The narrower claims allowed in the reissue patent * *
Neither counsel in the instant case asserts that there is any real conflict between Spitfire and England although they differ as to the application of Spitfire to the facts here involved. I submit that no conflict exists in the legal principles expressed by each of the opinions. But if conflict does exist it affords no basis for rejection of Spitfire rather than England.

. The reference is to counsel in another case.

. I am fully aware of the comment of Justice Frankfurter in his memorandum in Elgin Joliet & Eastern Ry. Co. v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 897, 78 S.Ct. 270, 2 L.Ed.2d 193 concerning lack of significance in the denial of certiorari. It is to be assumed, however, that the Supreme Court examined the amicus curiae brief it granted leave to be filed. If it was persuaded tliat Spitfire is or might be the gross perversion of the principles of patent law it was represented to be by the Association, and results in the dire consequences attributed to it, it does not seem unreasonable to assume that certiorari would have been granted.