Court Opinion

ID: 9636332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:24:34.076379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:44.382531
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in
part). I agree that it was not beyond the compass of a journeyman mechanic to eliminate the rod, 31, and make Dickson’s patent work by the treadle alone. This would preserve the kernel of the invention, which was certainly meritorious and new. Root’s patent was in detail altogether different from the defendant’s brake, yet both had this in common, that the operation of the piston locked the valve mechanically and held the pressure. Each accomplished this by an arm which closed the suetion valve, though by an entirely different meehanism. Nobody had ever applied such a device to a motor ear before. Root’s patent was, indeed, not limited to these alone, but that was its principal use, as he 'declared. It seems to me that we ought to allow his invention, to be generalized so far, and while claim two is not very aptly expressed, verbal correspondence is not important when the underlying notion has been taken. Courts keep repeating that a function is not patentable and there is indeed the highest authority for saying so. Yet I suppose that nine claims out of ten are drawn for “means” for doing this or that. What that is but a claim for a “function” I have never been able to see. If there be any such rule, it seems to me more honored in the breach than in the observance; surely it cannot be that it can be evaded by so simple a device as the use of this nearly universal word. At any rate the language of claim 2 serves well enough, I think, to cover a piston which has a mechanical connection with the suetion valve to shut it off by its motion.
I agree as to Dickson’s patent, but I think we should give a decree under claim 2 of Root’s.