Court Opinion

ID: 9419426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:26.643849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.049352
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
in dissent:
“A patent,” said Mr. Justice Holmes, “is property carried to the highest degree of abstraction — a right in rem to exclude, without a physical obj ect or content.”1 Here the *679patent covers a combination — a system — a sequence— which is said tobe new, although every element and factor in it is old and unpatentable. Thus we have an abstract right in an abstruse relationship between things in which individually there is no right — a legal concept which either is very profound or almost unintelligible, I cannot be quite sure which. • .«.««y
Undoubtedly the man who first devised a thermostat to control the flow of electric energy gave something to the world. But one who merely carried it to a new location, or used two instead of one, or three instead of two, or used it to control current for a stoker motor rather than for a damper, did not do much that I would not expect of a good mechanic familiar with the instrument. But that question of validity is not here. I assume that this patent confers some rights and ask what they are.
Of course the abstract right to the “sequence” has little economic importance unless its monopoly comprehends not only the arrangement but some, at least, of its components. If the patentee may not exclude competitors from making and vending strategic unpatented elements such as the thermostat, adapted to use in the combination, the patented system is so vulnerable to competition as to be almost worthless. On the other hand, if he may prohibit such competition, his system patent gathers up into its monopoly devices long known to the art and hence not themselves subject to any patent.
: It is suggested that such a patent should protect the patentee at least against one who knowingly and intentionally builds a device for úse in the combination and vends it for that purpose. That is what appears to have been done here. As to ethics, the parties seem to me as much on a parity as the pot and the kettle. But want of knowledge or innocent intent is not ordinarily available to diminish patent protection. I do not see how intent can *680make infringement of what otherwise is not. The less legal rights depend on someone’s state of mind, the better.
The practical issue is whether we will leave such a combination patent with little value indeed or whether we will give it value by projecting its economic effects to elements not by themselves a part of its legal monopoly. In these circumstances I think we should protect the patent owner in the enjoyment of just what he has been granted — an abstract right in an abstruse combination — worth whatever such a totality may be worth. I see no constitutional or statutory authority for giving it additional value by bringing into its monopoly all or any of the unpatentable parts.
For these reasons I agree with the Court that no case of infringement could have been made out had the issue been raised when it was timely. But I agree with the views of the doctrine of res adjudícala expressed by Mr. Justice Roberts and for that reason join the dissent.

 1 Holmes-Pollock Letters, p. 53.