Court Opinion

ID: 9443901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:33:34.693391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:38.493269
License: Public Domain

'O’CONNELL, Judge
(concurring in part, and dissenting in part).
I agree that the decision of the Board of Appeals should be affirmed as to the rejection of claims 1, 37, 38 and 39, and reversed as to claims 31 and 33.
The disallowance of claims 43, 44, 45 and 46 should likewise be reversed. The gist of the invention, for all furnaces regardless of their shapes and rates of production, is based upon the prevention by the employment of velocity, or rate of flow, as the effective means of preventing back flow of glass from one to another. The patentability of the principle involved was acknowledged in the Patent Office by the allowance of claim 42. As noted in appellants’ petition for reconsideration of the board’s decision:
“The invention can be clearly stated in terms of velocities as the applicants have done, and as the Examiner has approved, but it is impossible to translate the invention into different terms of ‘positive structure’.”
It is my conviction that appellants have complied with the requirements of the patent law. This court has established by a line of decisions that an inventor, for the reasonable and advantageous protection of the invention defined by an allowed claim or claims, is entitled to a limited number of additional claims, worded. differently or containing elements allowed in such claims, which do not affect patentability of one claim over another.
The underlying reason for the rule is to curb not only the activities of those engaged in pirating patented inventions but also to remove, under the assurance of *959adequate patent protection, the misgivings which otherwise could develop among investors who risk their capital and effort to make inventions available to the public, In re Franz, 190 F.2d 86, 38 C.C.P.A., Patents, 1206, 1211, and authorities therein cited.
It also appears to me that the Patent Office has failed to give appropriate reasons for the rejection of the claims last mentioned. In re Lee, 193 F.2d 186, 39 C.C.P.A., Patents, 752; International Standard Electric Corp. v. Kingsland, 83 U.S.App.D.C. 355, 169 F.2d 890.