Court Opinion

ID: 9454649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:53:29.587029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:13.283824
License: Public Domain

RICH, Acting Chief Judge
(dissenting).
The majority opinion seems to me contrary to numerous of our double patenting decisions of the past few years. It is remarkable in not citing a single one of them (or any other authority) to support this double-patenting rejection.
There is some confusion as to just what the basis of the rejection is. The board said, in its opinion on reconsideration and in agreement with the examiner, that “claims 4 and 23 [on appeal] do not describe an invention different than that described by claim 4 of S.N. 245,086 [now the Hofstein patent, 3,296,-508, claim 2 of which is relied on to support the double patenting rejection].” The Patent Office Solicitor, however, told us at oral argument that he disagreed with that statement by the board. The majority accepts the construction that this is an obvious-type double-patenting rejection rather than a same invention type case. The “not patentably distinguishing” language used by the examiner is ambiguous.
On the merits, I agree with appellant that both of the appealed claims call for a substrate connection which is separate and distinct from “the inherent coupling provided by location of ‘said other one of said pair of electrodes’ ón the substrate.” The majority tacitly admits that this is true with respect to claim 23 —otherwise it would not have been necessary to “affirm” the rejection of his claim on a ground never mentioned or relied on by the examiner, the board, or the solicitor, namely, that claim 23 does not require that there be rectifying junctions between the substrate and the source and drain and that, without such junctions, the substrate connection would serve no purpose. It seems to me that this is not a proper basis for any kind of double-patenting rejection but rather for a rejection of the claim under 35 U.S.C. 112 as indefinite, i. e., not “distinctly claiming.” But no such rejection was made.
I believe that so far as double patenting is concerned we have before us a fact situation similar to those we had in In re Heinle, 52 CCPA 1164, 342 F.2d 1001, 145 USPQ 131 (1965), and In re Allen, 52 CCPA 1315, 343 F.2d 482, 145 USPQ 147 (1965), and that the decisions in those cases and others like them control. The patent claims a transistor device and the claims on appeal are directed to combinations of circuit means including the transistor. This is clearly not a same invention situation, as the board said it was; neither is it an obvious variation of what the patent claims— namely, a transistor device.
I would reverse.