Court Opinion

ID: 9457760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:32:34.002348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:30.125181
License: Public Domain

*519CHOY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. I would hold that the District Court erred in concluding that the patent was invalid as “obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art” under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Accepting as sustained by the evidence in the record all of the findings of fact which are preeursive to consideration of this crucial issue of obviousness, it is my opinion that a conclusion of nonobviousness of the invention is compelled by the following findings:1
1. The published prior art contained no suggestion of direct consumable arc remelting of ingots of metal. (16)
2. The fabrication techniques which involved chopping up, or forging and rolling the initial arc-cast ingot before remelting (as in the Bureau of Mines’ “828” process) were time-consuming and expensive and inevitably resulted in “contamination” of the metal. (13, 20, 27)
3. For some months prior to completion of the invention, the Bureau of Mines, by its “828” process, had been remelting zirconium alloy metal, and up to at least July 26, 1952, had remelted three tons of such metal by that process. (19)
4. The wastage, increased cost of production and increased contamination •incident to the “828” process created a need for the invention over six months before the invention was completed. (33)2
5. On July 26-28, 1952, subsequent to, but not long after, the invention was developed, the Bureau of Mines independently and successfully employed its “610” direct double-melting technique without intermediate fabrication. (29, 44, 50, 51)
6. Direct remelting without intermediate fabrication resulted in much less waste of valuable zirconium alloy, decrease in cost of production, and reduction in contamination while still obtaining good homogeneity and soundness. (32)
7. The invention was immediately adopted by others and used to prepare zirconium ingots and has gone into universal use to produce sound homogeneous ingots of reactive metals.. (81, 82)
In Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S. 1, 17-18, 86 S.Ct. 684, 694, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966) the Supreme Court established the standards to be applied in determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103:
“Under § 103, the scope and content of the prior art are to be determined; differences between the prior art and the claims at issue are to be ascertained; and the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art resolved. Against this background, the obviousness or nonobviousness of the subject matter is determined. Such secondary considerations as commercial success, long felt but unsolved needs, failure of others, etc., might be utilized to give light to the circumstances surrounding the origin of the subject matter sought to be patented. As indicia of obviousness or nonobviousness, these inquiries may have relevancy.”
The District Court did determine the scope and content of the prior art; it did ascertain the differences between the prior art and the invention at issue; but it did not resolve the level of ordi*520nary skill in the pertinent art.3 The Findings of Fact furnish a rather clear conception of the efforts and developments on the part of metallurgy experts dealing with reactive metals. But we are given nothing about the level of ordinary skill in the art, about the metallurgist or technician of ordinary skill and how obvious or unobvious the invention was to him when it was made. Obviously, the expert cannot be equated with the “person having ordinary skill in the art” contemplated by § 103. An expert is by his very nature unordi-nary.4
At any rate, if the double-melting process eluded the experts “over six months” (probably since 1948) in a period of national need for the process during the continuing international arms race, how can it be said that the invention was obvious? The Bureau of Mines would not have produced three tons of zirconium alloy using its slow and expensive “828” process with 56 percent yield if the fast and relatively economical double-melting process which resulted in 95 percent yield had been obvious.
The speedy commercial success and universal use of the process attest to the great need of the invention. The independent and almost contemporaneous, but subsequent development of the “610” process by the Bureau of Mines does not denote obviousness in my opinion. If it did, then every- time two or more inventors independently devise an invention, however novel, ingenious and unob-vious, within a short time of each other, the inventions would be “obvious” under the statute. The entire purpose of the law of patent interference is to determine who first invented the item at issue. Appellant’s inventors won the race to the patent office, and should be protected.

. The figures in parentheses are Findings of Fact numbers as found in the District Court opinion, 306 F.Supp. 402 (Nev.1969).

. The need appears to have existed as early as 1948 when the U. S. Navy began development of atomic reactors to power naval vessels. During 1950-51 Westinghouse constructed a jirototype or Mark I nuclear reactor made from more than 20 tons of “crystal bar” zirconium which was produced from zirconium sponge by a tedious and expensive purification process. Findings of Fact 6-10.

. See Abington Textile Machinery Works v. Carding Specialists (Canada) Ltd., 249 F.Supp. 823 (D.C., D.C.1965).

. It appears that all of the evidence presented dealt with or emanated from only experts in the field of metallurgy; e. g., Kroll of the Bureau of Mines, who developed a process for the production of sponge zirconium; Parke and Ham, who published a paper on the melting of molybdenum in the vacuum arc; I-Iayes, chief of the physical metallurgy branch, Bureau of Mines; Stephens (former chief of the rare metals branch, Bureau of Mines) metallurgist with Carborundum Metals Co.; Gordon and Hurford, the actual inventors of the process in issue here; Herres, head of titanium research at Allegheny Ludlum; and Kuhn, expert of Titanium Alloy Manufacturing Division, National Lead Company.