Court Opinion

ID: 9448671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:42:31.29601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:31.418614
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge
(concurring).
The result reached by the majority is, in my opinion, the correct one. However, I reach this result on a somewhat narrower ground than is to be implied from the majority’s statement, “It seems to us that the board’s analysis of the case is accurate and its conclusion that the claims are unpatentable over the Ernst patent is correct.”
There are many problems which arise in the mass production of items such as-the “correlated hydraulic presses” here claimed and in which neither the problems nor their solutions can be said to be “obvious”, and may well involve more than the mere assembly of prefabricated units into a final manufactured entity. I do not agree that the decision of the board should be so broadly affirmed that, the present opinion will become a binding precedent for the proposition that the mass production techniques of the automotive industry make mass production of all other items “obvious” and hence unpatentable.
In my judgment, each case requires a careful consideration of its own unique facts from which one can understand the particular problem to be solved as well as the proposed solution for that problem. It is only in view of such an understanding that it is possible to malm the determination required by 35 U.S.C. § 103.
*473I have so analyzed the record here, and would affirm the decision of the board for the single reason that the rejected claims do not distinguish over the Ernst reference except as to the recital of features which are inherent in the expected engineering determinations and which I consider would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the design of hydraulic presses.