Court Opinion

ID: 9651270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:12:00.212242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:31.540271
License: Public Domain

SWAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
When a man sells his business on terms which make it possible that he may have to buy it back, it seems to me entirely reasonable for him to require the purchaser in that event to turn over any improvement patents which have been taken out in the meantime. If the seller had no patent when he sold his business, a stipulation that patents thereafter taken out by the buyer in connection with the business should be assigned to the seller if the business was returned to him pursuant to the terms of the agreement, would in my opinion be valid — and my brother’s argument does not suggest the contrary. The situation would seem to be analogous to requiring an employee t.o assign inventions made in the course of his employment. Guth v. Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co., 7 Cir., 72 F.2d 385, certiorari denied 294 U.S. 711, 55 S.Ct. 506, 79 L.Ed. 1245. Even if the seller of the business owned a patent under which the buyer received a license, a stipulation that any improvement patents should belong to the licensor would formerly have been sustained. See Allbright-Nell Co. v. Stanley Hiller Co., 7 Cir., 72 F.2d 392. Recent Supreme Court cases upon which my brothers rely have established the principle that “the owner of a'patent may not employ it to secure a limited monopoly of an Unpatented material used m applying the invention.” Mercoid Corporation v. Mid-Continent Co., 320 U.S. 661, 664, 64 S.Ct. 268, 271, 88 L.Ed. 376. The application of that principle to the case at bar requires an extension of the doctrine to very different facts and I can see no valid reasons for so extending it. In my opinion the judgment should be affirmed.