Court Opinion

ID: 9454844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:01:04.462862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:20.344610
License: Public Domain

*605GERALD McLAUGHLIN,
Circuit Judge (dissenting).
The admitted issue here is whether the Maier 914 method patent is invalid for obviousness. I agree with Judge Kirkpatrick in the District Court that patent 913 is not infringed. I do not understand the majority opinion to dispute the directive of the governing Patent Act U.S.C. Title 35, § 282, that “[t]he burden of establishing the invalidity of a patent shall rest on a party asserting it.” That burden is a heavy one. To overcome the assumption of a patent’s validity there must be “convincing evidence of error”. Radio Corporation of America v. Radio Engineering Laboratories, Inc., 293 U.S. 1, 7, 55 S.Ct. 928, 79 L.Ed. 163 (1934). In the light of the whole true historical picture of the efforts to make satisfactory liners for metal caps of beverage bottles let us see if the Mai-er 913 patent of procedures to produce such a liner were obvious to a person ordinarily skilled in the art involved. The problem was factual. The opinion in the recent Eimco Corporation v. Peterson, etc. Co., 406 F.2d 431, 435, 436 (10 Cir. 1968); rehearing denied, March 17, 1969, presents this very well, saying “As indicated in the Graham case, obviousness ‘to a person having ordinary skill in the art’ is an illusive factual subject to be determined by the trial court * * * which determination should not be set aside in the absence of clear error.” In another late decision, Amerline Corporation v. Cosmo Plastics Company, 407 F.2d 666 (7 Cir. March 3, 1969), the fact finding of the trial court that the suit patent was invalid for obviousness was affirmed because it was not “clearly erroneous”.
The majority, because as the trial court said “practically every major step of the process is to be found somewhere in the prior art”, would have it that what Maier did “was simply the application of existing knowledge”. What Maier actually did was to substitute plastisol in a semi fluid state for other known materials. That combination was new, mint fresh, completely Maier’s. It was what interested parties e. g. the plaintiff and defendant before us, had been unsuccessfully trying to achieve for years.
The substitution of material as Maier accomplished it, under the particular un-escapable facts, did constitute invention. That doctrine is sound patent law and so recognized generally, including this circuit. Back in 1920, Low v. McMaster, 266 F. 518 (3 Cir. 1920) dealt with a comparable problem, a substitution of a solid for the liquid fuel of the prior art. Judge Woolley for the court, in upholding both said patents, stated regarding the substitution of materials as constituting invention, pp. 519, 520:
“It is also the law, as exceptions to this general rule, that if the substitution involved a new mode of construction ; or if it developed new properties and uses of the article made; or where it produces a new mode of operation, or results in a new function; or when it is the first practical success in the art in which the substitution is made; or where the practice shows its superiority to consist not only in greater cheapness and greater utility, but also in more efficient action, it may amount to invention. Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., 93 U.S. 486, 496, 23 L.Ed. 952; Celluloid Mfg. Co. v. Crane Chemical Co. (C.C.) 36 Fed. 110; Potts v. Craeger, 155 U.S. 597, 608, 15 Sup.Ct. 194, 39 L.Ed. 275; Walker on Patents, §§ 28, 29, 36.”
“These are the principles to be applied here.”
In a later decision of this court which was also fundamentally similar to the case at bar, Spruance Co. v. Ellis-Foster Co., 114 F.2d 771 (1940), Judge Biggs for the court said:
“In the light of the foregoing we think that Weber did demonstrate inventive genius, that he seized upon a thing which was available to all but which had been grasped by none, and was able to fit it into a new place, to cre*606ate an original and useful result. We conclude that this was not the exercise of mere mechanical ingenuity or a step in the natural development of an art, but was in fact invention. The case at bar presents an almost classic example of a new use.”
Yablick v. Protecto Safety Appliance Corporation, 21 F.2d 885 (3 Cir. 1927) passed upon the same sort of factual basics as are the major elements of the instant appeal. There a known chemical, substituted for substances unsuccessfully used in the apparatus concerned, was upheld as patentable. The court said p. 886 with reference to the substitution, “This fact was not translated into commercial utility until the genius of the patentees discovered it.”
There can be no possible misunderstanding of the opinion of the trial judge. He correctly found invention in the substitution of the plastisol. Because Maier’s invention was genuine and vital in its special field, the facts that the entire industry had been unable to solve the liner difficulty and the great commercial acceptance of the new combination, though of secondary consideration were under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 18, 86 S.Ct. 684, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966) relevant as indicia of non-obviousness against the true invention background of the Maier process. The court fully understood this and so plainly indicated in the opinion. In addition it was quite properly noted in connection with the merits, that in this suit, as in Jones Knitting Corporation v. Morgan, 361 F.2d 451, 458 (3 Cir. 1966), there exists “a lack of any convincing testimony of those skilled in the art, of obviousness.”
The carefully reasoned, fully documented opinion of the trial court is firmly rooted in current governing patent law. To casually brush it aside where the contention of obviousness does not even have “a dubious preponderance” 1 is a distinct loss to a much needed, high level implementation of that law. I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

. Radio Corporation v. Radio Engineering Laboratories, supra, p. 8.