Court Opinion

ID: 9636269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:22:13.348296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:43.664588
License: Public Domain

AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
The majority opinion holds that claims 1 and 13 of United States patent No. 1,-721,530 to Schick are valid but not infringed by defendant’s Packard razor, and bases this conclusion on limitations of the claims imposed because of the British Patent No. 753 (1913) to Appleyard. With this I cannot agree.
It is true that Appleyard, like Schick, shows a movable cutter which is to be reciprocated in an endwise direction, but the cutting mechanism of Appleyard is along two edges of the plate as in the ordinary Gilletté Safety Razor, and Apple-yard had to employ combs on each side in order to protect the skin of the user from abrasion. This was because the teeth of the reciprocating cutter were on the outside of the plate rather than underneath it as in Schick. The transverse slots shown in one of Appleyard’s diagrams are not in a shearer plate that is to act in connection with the reciprocating plate as a cutter but are plainly inserted only as a means of bringing the razor closer to the face. In the sense of Schick it is not a shearer plate at all.
The question is whether what the majority opinion terms a turning of “edges in upon themselves so that they face across the endwise slot” involved only a skillful adaptation of Appleyard’s ideas or was essentially an appropriation of Schick’s invention. In view of the fact that nothing close to either the Schick or the defendant’s Packard razor is shown in the prior art and that the suggested turning of Appíeyard’s cutting edges toward one another is far from obvious but involves a complete reorganization of Apple-*648yard’s device, the Schick patent seems to me entitled to a considerably broader range of equivalents than the majority of the court would allow. The opinion concedes that Schick’s patent is valid and that his invention was a great improvement over Appleyard. If this be so, I cannot believe that the interposition of a long slot which crosses the transverse slots of Schick prevents defendant’s Packard razor from falling within the claims. The two devices operate in substantially the same way, and the long slots which only slightly interrupt the continuity of the Schick cutting members are at best no more than slight improvements over the earlier razor. Appleyard does not td my mind suggest the Packard razor or limit the claims in issue. If this be so, the decree of the District Court should be affirmed and claims 1 and 3, supra, held infringed. With all respect such seems to me the proper disposition of the cause of action involving United States patent No. 1,721,530.