Court Opinion

ID: 9448209
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:25:33.797924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:19.427769
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge
(dissenting).
The statutory test as to the sufficiency of a disclosure under 35 U.S.C. § 112, requires a factual consideration of the record to determine whether the disclosure is in fact such a disclosure as “to enable any person skilled in the art * * * to make and use” the disclosed invention.
The first step in applying this test requires us to determine what the disclosure communicates to a person skilled in the art to which the disclosure pertains. The examiner, the Board of Appeals and the majority opinion find the disclosure inadequate because the art of record does not disclose a saw-tooth generator of *255conventional construction operable at a frequency higher than 2 megacycles.1
I do not think this is an adequate basis upon which to determine what is communicated by the disclosure in issue to one skilled in the television art.
It seems to me that where the issue here is essentially one of the correctness of technical assertions made, the affidavit of Hirsch as to what one skilled in the television art would know from the disclosure is entitled to greater credence than has been assigned to it in the majority opinion. The affidavit verifies that the disclosure teaches enough so that one skilled in the television art could make and use the invention. An application addressed to “any person skilled in the art” should be tested by what it discloses to such a person, the best evidence of which, on the record before us, is the affidavit of applicant.
Under these circumstances, my view is that expressed in In re Brooks et al., 90 F.2d 106, 108, 24 CCPA 1203, where, as here, this court was required to evaluate an applicant’s affidavit as against the opinion of the examiner. As was said in the Brooks case, “ * * * we are not disposed to accept the opinion of the examiner in the face of positive recitals in appellant’s application, and in the face of the affidavit above referred to.” See, also, In re Lowry, 93 F.2d 909, 25 CCPA 829.
The board cited Ex parte Sziklai, 110 USPQ 325 in support of the proposition that—
“Where a device is presented in an application essentially only by means of a labeled rectangle, with no other description or illustration of specific circuitry, it must be one of known conventional nature in the prior art in order that such presentation be regarded as a sufficient disclosure.”
In the Sziklai case, the examiner had questioned the disclosure of “synchronous detectors” in a block diagram. In this connection, the Board of Appeals pointed out:
“It seems clear that synchronous detectors are more or less well known and appellant has filed a photostatie copy of an article from the Journal of the British Institution of Radio Engineers which indicates that the homodyne and synchrodyne methods of detection have been used for many years.”
The board then held:
“It seems to us that in view of the obvious prior knowledge of synchronous detectors appellant is justified in disclosing the use of a conventional synchronous detector by means of a properly labeled rectangle.”
The board in the Sziklai case tested the definitiveness of the disclosures by reading into them what was old and conventional in the art. Thus the board said:
“After careful consideration of appellant’s disclosure, we are of the opinion that it is sufficiently definite, when taking into account the fact that the various elements enclosed within the rectangles are old in themselves and conventional in prior art television and/or radio systems, to enable a person skilled in this art to practice the invention.” 2
Under the rationale of the Sziklai decision, it seems to me that the showing *256made by appellant constitutes a sufficient diselosuré. Appellant’s affidavit should have required the examiner either to accept the statements of applicant as to what is known technically to one skilled in the art, or to have categorically stated that the disclosures made by applicant were technically incorrect, and in so doing, point out the reasons why this is so. 35 U.S.C. § 132.
Under these circumstances I would not attempt, as does the majority, to make a factual determination as to the technical correctness of the statements made nor would I pass on the adequacy of the disclosure for the reason stated in In re Chilowsky, 229 F.2d 457, 463, 43 CCPA 775, that “the Patent Office tribunals have not sufficiently explained the reasons for their rejection of the appellant’s claims to permit a proper determination of that issue here.”
The general situation here presented has been before this court on numerous occasions and in each instance this court has placed a duty on the Patent Office tribunals to state the reasons for the action taken. See, for example, in re Thompson et al., 143 F.2d 357, 31 CCPA 1121; In re O’Keefe, 202 F.2d 767, 40 CCPA 879, and In re Chilowsky, supra.
I think prosecution of this application should proceed from the point in the record where the publications and the affidavits were submitted.
For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the decision of the board and remand the application for further proceedings.

. It is noted that while the examiner’s search discovered only a saw-tooth generator, operable at 200 kilocycles as quoted in the majority opinion, the Electrical Engineers Handbook, 4th ed. (1950), by Pender and Mcllwain indicate that a multibrator type saw-tooth generator might be made to operate up to 1,000,000 cycles (1 MO). While this does not necessarily indicate that a person skilled in the art could readily construct a 2,000,000 cycle (2 MG) saw-tooth generator, it suggests caution in the use of the examiner’s failure to find a reference above 200,000 cycles as the sole basis upon which to decide what the disclosure in question teaches one skilled in the art.

. In passing, we observe that the examiner appears to have added his own views to the holding of the board in the Sziklai *256case, for in the letter of June 6, 1957, he said:
“The specification is further deficient in the disclosure of the structure of the generator. The use of rectangles indicates that any apparatus of the type named in the rectangle may he inserted therein without modification. Applicaut’s disclosure however requires that the sawtooth [sic] oscillator operate at two megacycles. Applicant has not indicated what oscillator circuit may be used. All sawtooth [sic] oscillators are not operable at this frequency.” [Emphasis added].