Court Opinion

ID: 9642198
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:51:53.068148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:44.333584
License: Public Domain

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
In this court’s holding the process claims valid and infringed I concur. From its holding the product claims invalid I dissent. In view of the importance of the case to the litigants and of the patent principles involved, I record my views at length.
Confronted by the vast amount of testimony in this ease, let me settle what is the actual thing, the issue, these parties are fighting about. It is a tungsten wire. If I bear this tungsten wire in mind it will bring to this suit the same, clear light that wire brought to the electric light art. I squarely face the controversy- when I say that as a new product of manufacture the patent demands an exclusive right to a tungsten wire in the varied wording of the claims, viz.: “24. A wire formed of ductile tungsten;” “26. Substantially pure tungsten having duetility and high tensile strength;” “27. A ductile tungsten wire having a fibrous structure;”. *649“28. A form of tungsten metal pliable at room temperature;” “33. The material wrought tungsten, having a specific gravity of approximately 19 or greater, and capable of being forged and worked;” and “34. Wrought tungsten, a solid coherent characterized by the presence of crystals deformed by mechanical working.”
Taking for present purposes claim 24, “a wire formed of ductile tungsten,” as the general and inclusive one for a tungsten wire and the others as descriptive of specific characteristics thereof, we have before us the simplified and decisive question here involved. Is a tungsten wire new? Second, is it useful? Third, is it inventive? Fourth, is it patentable? If the answer to any one of the four is negative, the patent falls. If the answer to all four is affirmative, the patent stands. Accordingly, we turn to the first question, was tungsten wire new? The pat-entee averred it was, viz. “My invention comprises a new incandescent lamp filament of drawn wire made from metal tungsten and a new process of producing the same.” The grant of the claim and issue of the patent was based on this assertion that tungsten wire was new.
The prima facies of a patent,- as to invention, is merely the expression of an opinion and therefore but persuasive, but the finding of novelty is one of fact and as said in Edison v. Beacon (C. C.) 54 F. 693, and cases cited, “The presumption of novelty arising from the grant of the patent is not to be overcome except upon clear and convincing proof.” But the novelty of tungsten -wire does not depend on presumptions in an ex parte inquiry, but upon the facts proven in this record. These show that there simply never was a tungsten wire before the patentee’s, and no one avers it was not new. Other than its metallic use as an alloy, tungsten had never been treated mechanically to form anything nearer to a wire than the squirt filament of Just’s patent. Indeed, so new was tungsten wire and so barren the art of any way of making it, that this patentee was awarded claims for his novel method of making his novel product. Without therefore citing the proofs, I find tungsten wire was new.
Turning to the second question, Was it useful ? The defendant answers that question by using it. And the public evidence its usefulness not only by using it but using it to the exclusion of all other electric lighting filaments. Its superiority and usefulness over all filaments is proved, (a) by its capacity to furnish more light on less current; (b) by reducing the cost of light; (c) by extending the use of lights to automobiles, trolley and railroad ears; and (d) by making transportation of tungsten bulbs possible. I therefore find it was useful.
Was tungsten wire inventive in origin? I note here that I confine my inquiry to its inventive origin and do not here discuss the fourth question, Was it patentable? ' I think tungsten wire was an invention in discovery, an invention in conception, an invention in product. Whatever the nature of tungsten, whatever its properties, whatever its possibilities, sure it is that tungsten wire was not an outgrowth of progress in the art, for tungsten was at a standstill. No matter what experts may now theorize and say, the unbroken and prior recorded literature of disinterested journals, dictionaries, and scientists was that tungsten was not a thing of which wire could be made. Whether this literature was right or wrong, we have the patentee’s daring and original step in the face of this solid wall of universal metallic belief, and from what was considered an unworkable metal he made a product then deemed impossible of production. That was the problem that confronted the patentee. In measuring what he did we rightfully start where he started, namely, with the fact of the belief of the then scientific world, and against and in the face of that belief, whether right or wrong mattered not then or now, he took the original step of his discovery. And if it be concluded now that subsequent events show that the prior beliefs of the scientific world were wrong, which I think is not the fact, it seems to me he is all the more original in standing out against such mistake and by an inventive act proving the prior fallacy of scientists. Without here detailing the grounds in support of the view that tungsten wire was an invention, it seems to me that if tungsten wire was new, as .1 find it was, and, if tungsten was so different in character that wire could not be made from it by any known process of the wire art, but that a new process had to be and was invented by the inventor to make the new wire, I am warranted in saying the invented process goes hand in hand with an invented product. I therefore hold the tungsten wire was an invention, and take up the fourth question, Was such invention, namely, to úse the words of the claim, “a wire formed of ductile tungsten,” patentable?
In considering that question, I take the words of the claim as I find them, inquire what those words mean and imply, and then ask myself the question, Is this “wire,” this “formed wire,” this wire “formed of tungsten,” this “wire formed of ductile tungsten,” *650patentable? This brings me to the basic and decisive inquiry, Do the patent laws provide for a patent for such an article as is here involved? In that regard section 4886 (35 TJS CA § 31) provides “Any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful * * * manufacture * * * may * * * obtain a patent therefor.” It will thus be seen that the first inquiry is whether “a wire formed of ductile tungsten” is a manufacture. Now it seems to me the word “wire” in and of itself stamps this product as manufactured, and therefore a manufacture contemplated by the statute. As wire is defined “a metallic substance formed to an even thread by being passed between grooved rollers or drawn through holes in a plate of metal,” the process of forming .by rollers or drawing through a metal hole makes wire a manufacture, and such wire does not lose or add to its character of being a manufacture by being made .or formed of “ductile tungsten.” This word “ductile” has been the subject of so much testimony, theorizing and discussion that we are in danger of being misled thereby. We are concerned with the use of the word “ductile” in the literature of the art prior to the patent, for that shows its meaning in the claim. In its common, everyday meaning it means what the dictionary says, “capable of being elongated or drawn out, as into wire or threads.” That, as it seems to me, was what the literature of the prior art meant when it said in effebt that tungsten, in whatever form it existed, as an ore, a chip, flake, or oxide, was not capable of being “drawn out, as into wire or threads.” And this, in the ordinary acceptation of words, was what such prior literature held on the subject, and, resting on that belief, it warned and told the patentee he was dealing with a metal that could not be “drawn out, as into wire or threads.” To now show that the metal, by inventive process, could be “drawn out, as into wire or threads,” and therefore had in it all the time the latent and dormant, but nevertheless the existent, possibility of being “drawn out, as into wire and threads,” and was therefore potentially ductile, and not impotently nonduetile, only serve to my mind to show the more strongly the marked originality and inventiveness this patentee displayed in giving to the public for the first time tungsten wire and the consequent advance in electric lighting.
When I consider the remarkable, if not startling, fruitage, his original thought and radical departure from preconceived scientific belief has borne, the strongest wire the world now has, the tensile strength of the metal increased thirtyfold, a brilliancy of light that has paled Edison epoch making carbon filament, I realize I am face to face with a great improvement. This whole step, its temporary reward, its protection, its monopoly is summarized in this claim, “a wire formed of ductile tungsten.” Edison was the creator of electric lighting by a carbon filament. This patentee was its re-creator by a tungsten wire filament. Put the two face to face today and which light has dominion over the other? Which shall prevail? The public has answered that question by substituting the tungsten product for the carbon filament. Of Edison, Judge Colt, with prophetic eye, at the very inception of electric development, in Edison Electric Light Co. v. Boston Incandescent Lamp Co. (C. C.) 62 F. 397, said:
“The invention of Edison resides in the carbon filament; the other elements of the combination were old and subordinate, and represent, so to speak, only the environment of the filament. For this reason, I do not think the court should seek to restrict the plain meaning of the language of the claim. And there is another reason for giving the claim a broad construction. Edison made an important invention; he produced the first practical incandescent electric .lamp; the patent is a pioneer in the sense of the patent law; it may be said that his invention created the art of incandescent electric lighting. Where a valuable invention has been made, the court will uphold that which was feally invented, and which comes within any fair interpretation of the patentee’s claim.”
In stronger terms we can apply his language and the spirit of his decision to tungsten wire. If the carbon filament was a manufacture ; if barbed wire was a manufacture, how can we say that tungsten wire, novel, useful, inventive, was not entitled to patent protection as a product of manufacture?