Court Opinion

ID: 9450837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:59:21.617539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:28.548470
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge
(concurring, with whom RICH, J„ joins).
I have studied the rejection of all the claims as unpatentable over the prior art, and I find myself in agreement with the board that appellants’ invention would have been obvious in view of the Rougeron and Fermi references. Thus I concur in the majority’s affirmance of that aspect of the board’s decision.
However, I cannot accept the conclusion of the majority that appellants’ *562specification is “deficient as to details ' of operation necessary to provide the zone of molten salt required by the invention.” This conclusion appears to be based entirely upon the fact that one of the problems noted in connection with the Project Gnome experiment was partial collapse of the cavity, as reported in UCRL 7166. That same report, however, points out:
It is clear that if rock blow-off and collapse could be minimized so that an undiluted puddle of melt would exist in the base of the standing cavity, then additional power recover studies would be warranted. The salt environment typical of many salt domes may be a significant improvement over bedded salt deposits; dome salt contains less water and fewer structural weaknesses than bedded salt and these properties would reduce implosion and collapse. [Emphasis added.]
Now it cannot be denied that appellants’ specification and drawings contain copious disclosure of the advantages of working with a salt dome formation and set forth in detailed and understandable terms precisely how the invention should be carried out. Thus the majority’s position must necessarily amount to this: granted that a person of ordinary skill in this art could follow appellants’ instructions to the letter, it is still possible, in view of the Project Gnome results, that the cavity might collapse and thus prevent formation of an effective zone of molten salt. In other words, appellants’ disclosed method is possibly inoperative. As the majority asserts:
* * * There is no reasonable assurance that appellants’ disclosure would enable one skilled in the art to be any more successful in attaining a pool of molten salt than were the experimenters in Project Gnome.
I must respectfully disagree. If reasonable assurance is what is desired, what could be more reasonable than the assurance of the experts who prepared UCRL 7166 that “salt domes may be a significant improvement” and that their properties “would reduce implosion and collapse?” The majority seeks to depreciate these assurances by characterizing them as “purely conjectural.” To the contrary, I suggest that these statements represent an informed prognosis by highly qualified experts based upon a rigorous diagnosis of the problems encountered in the Project Gnome experiment. And they indicate that appellants’ claimed method, when carried out according to the teachings of appellants’ disclosure, would indeed be operative.
The majority itself indulges in conjecture and speculation when it states that “the fact that the method has not been performed compels recognition that other problems not yet uncovered may exist in addition to those discussed.” Of course this statement is correct — indeed, it is a truism — but I fail to see what it has to do with the present question of the sufficiency of appellants’ disclosure. Certainly the majority does not intend to imply thereby that an applicant must attempt to foresee “problems not yet uncovered” and provide solutions for them in his specification, for this would require actual reduction to practice of the claimed invention before the application could be successfully prosecuted.
I, for one, am of the view that this court should give more than mere lip service to the well-established principle it restated in In re Chilowsky, 229 F.2d 457, 43 CCPA 775, that “The mere fact that something has not previously been done clearly is not, in itself, a sufficient basis for rejecting all applications purporting to disclose how to do it.” In Chilowsky, a case which also involved applications of atomic energy, this court pointed out that “The failure of other devices designed for the same general purpose does not prove that appellant’s device could not operate successfully.” The same reasoning applies with equal vigor here. Appellants’ specification is more than adequate in providing reasonable assurance to persons having ordinary skill in this art that appellants’ invention, if carried out according to the *563details in the disclosure, will operate as claimed. This, as the law now stands, satisfies 35 U.S.C. § 112. If the majority seeks to alter the law by refusing patents for subject matter because it has not been actually reduced to practice, it should say so. I would reverse the board’s decision regarding sufficiency of disclosure.