Court Opinion

ID: 9444276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 20:54:58.94456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:47.685336
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I think that the patent sued on involves patentable novelty and should be held valid. The patentee has done more than merely substitute materials in the manufacture of a megaphone or dunce cap. He has devised a traffic marker of great utility, which has met a real need and which has solved a problem which other attempts had failed to solve. The fact that it is a combination of old elements does not detract from its pat-entability, for these have been brought together in the production of a new and useful result, viz., a traffic marker which, because of the resiliency of the materials of which it is made and the shape which is given it, can be used quickly, successfully and safely as a marker for the guidance of traffic in the highways of the country. None of the devices shown in the prior art were successful or could be successful in solving the problem thus presented. In addition to the presumption of validity resulting from the issuance of the patent by the Patent Office, there is the presumption arising from the fact that the device achieved immediate commercial success as soon as materials were available for its manufacture after the war and was widely used throughout the country. The president of the infringing company was so impressed with it that he sought to buy an interest in the patent or obtain sales rights thereunder and, when unsuccessful in this, made a minor change in the shape of the base of the device in an evident attempt to avoid infringement, obtained a Canadian patent on the change thus made and applied for a patent thereon in the United States.
Very much in point here is the decision of this court in Watson v. Heil, 4 cir., 192 F.2d 982, where we reversed a decision denying validity to a patent for a grocery cart with nesting baskets and sent the case back for further hearing in which the patent was sustained. In point, also, is the decision of this court in Black & Decker Mfg. Co. v. Baltimore Truck Tire Service Corp., 4 cir., 40 F.2d 910, where we upheld the validity of a patent on a hand scale for weighing automobile trucks, although all of the elements used in the scale were old in the art, quoting from Mr. Justice Bradley in Webster Loom Co. v. Higgins, 105 U.S. 580, 591, 26 L.Ed. 1177, that “It may be laid down as a general rule, though perhaps not an invariable one, that if a new combination and arrangement of known elements produce a new and beneficial result, never attained before, it is evidence of invention”.
The device of the patent seems obvious, now that the inventor has produced it, but as said by Mr. Justice McKenna in the oft-quoted passage from Diamond Rubber Co. v. Consolidated Tire Co., 220 U.S. 428, 435, 31 S.Ct. 444, 447, 55 L.Ed. 527: “Knowledge after the event is always easy, and problems once solved present no difficulties, indeed, may be represented as never having had any, and expert witnesses may be brought forward to show that the new thing which seemed to have eluded the search of the world was always ready at hand and easy to be seen by a merely skillful attention. But the law has other tests of the invention than subtle conjectures of what might have been seen and yet was not. It regards a change as evidence of novelty, the acceptance and utility of change as a further evidence, even as demonstration.”
The invention filled a want in the industry and entered into immediate use when placed on the market by the plaintiff. Temco Electric Motor Co. v. Apco *550Co., 275 U.S. 319, 48 S.Ct. 170, 72 L.Ed. 298; Diamond Rubber Co. v. Consolidated Rubber Tire Co., supra; Pang-born Corporation v. W. W. Sly Mfg. Co., 4 cir., 284 F. 217. And in addition to this we have the presumption arising from the imitation of the patented article by the manufacturers of the alleged infringing device. As said by Judge Hough, speaking for the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit in Kurtz v. Belle Hat Lining Co., 280 F. 277, 281: “The imitation of a thing patented by a defendant, who denies invention, has often been regarded, perhaps especially in this circuit, as conclusive evidence of what the defendant thinks of the patent, and persuasive of what the rest of the world ought to think.”
I would sustain the validity of the patent.