Court Opinion

ID: 9444692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:09:01.413995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:58.127913
License: Public Domain

BIGGS, Chief Judge
(dissenting in part and concurring in part). .
The majority opinion holds that because-of the compromise agreement of the first declaratory judgment suit by Hall and Nalco (Delaware C.A. 538), because of the license issued thereunder to Hall *309authorizing it to employ the processes of the Fink-Richardson patent in issue and because of the “final judgment” of the court below dismissing the suit on stipulation of Hall and Nalco, the court below on remand can consider, under the Marcalus doctrine of the Supreme Court, Scott Paper Co. v. Marcalus Manufacturing Co., Inc., 1945, 326 U.S. 249, 66 S.Ct. 101, 90 L.Ed. 47, only whether the Judson Patent, No. 1,924,861, the Burk Patent, No. 2,063,788, and the Rosen-stein Patent, No. 2,038,316 (all of which expired prior to the entry of the judgment appealed from) can be employed to limit the claims of the Fink-Richardson patent; that all other prior art, including prior public use and sale cannot be employed to limit the claims. This is the only substantial issue presented by the appeal at bar. Cf. Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Formica Insulation Co., 1924, 266 U.S. 342, 45 S.Ct. 117, 69 L.Ed. 316.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Mar-calus does not require such a result and our opinion in that case looks decidedly the other way. The Supreme Court in Marcalus did not hold that prior art (other than prior expired patents) could not be employed by the vendor of the patent to limit claims.
Our opinion in Marcalus said: “If we are correct in our conclusion that under the rule of the Formica decision the prior art measures the extent of the anticipation and the anticipation limits the claims, anticipation being complete in the instant case, the claims of the patent must be limited to nought.” See 147 F.2d at page 613. True this was dictum for it was not necessary to go this far in Marcalus. But in the instant case on the present record it is necessary to decide whether prior art, other than prior expired patents, can be employed to limit the claims of Fink-Richardson. This is so because Hall has pleaded not only prior art as represented by the patents hereinbefore referred to but has also pleaded prior public use and sale.
The majority relies, as did Chief Judge Leahy in the court below, on the established doctrine that where a voluntary compromise is reached it is normally binding, as is any contract. I agree. But, aside from the Formica-Marcalus exception as to limitation of claims, it has always been the law that a licensee could not attack the patent under which he was licensed. Under the Formica-Marcalus doctrine the overriding consideration became and is the limitation of monopoly for the public good, so that attack can be permitted. There is no sound reason why the courts should permit a license, even though issued pursuant to a compromise agreement and after a judgment of dismissal agreed to by the parties, to be employed as a bar to an attack on a monopoly.
The majority opinion states that the estoppel principle is not “moribund”, referring to Automatic Radio Mfg. Co. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 1950, 339 U.S. 827, 70 S.Ct. 894, 94 L.Ed. 1312, and quoting from that opinion. But the issue as to whether the Marcalus doctrine was to be limited to prior art represented by expired patents was simply not in focus in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in that case though Mr. Justice Douglas referred to Marcalus in his dissent. This is demonstrated by the fact that in the opinion Hazeltine Research v. Automatic Radio Mfg. Co., in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, 77 F.Supp. 493, 497, no mention is made of prior art. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit by Chief Judge Magruder said: “Although Automatic’s motion for summary judgment and its supporting affidavit make the general statement that none of Hazeltine’s patents covered by the license are valid, no concrete attempt was made to buttress these assertions, and the district court concluded: ‘Furthermore, the defendant does not purport to contest the validity of all plaintiff’s patents.’ D.C., 77 F.Supp. at page 497.” See 176 F.2d at page 806.
In conclusion it should be pointed out that in Marcalus Mr. Chief Justice Stone laid emphasis on the patent statute itself. He said, 326 U.S. at pages 257-258, *31066 S.Ct. at page 105: “The interest in private good faith is not a universal touchstone which can be made the means of sacrificing- a public interest secured by an appropriate exercise of the legislative power. The .patent laws preclude us from saying that the patent assignment, which they authorize, operates to estop the assignor from asserting that which the patent laws prescribe, namely, -that the invention of an expired patent is-dedicated to the public, of which the assignor is a member.
“The judgment is affirmed for the reason that we find that the application of the doctrine of estoppel so as to' foreclose the assignor of a patent from asserting the right to make use of the prior art invention of an expired patent, which anticipates that of the assigned patent, is inconsistent with the patent laws which dedicate to public use the invention of an expired patent: .The assignor has a complete defense,to an action for infringement where the alleged infringing device is that of an expired patent.”
Mr. Chief Justice Stone stated in substance that since the patent statute proscribed the continuation of - a patent monopoly beyond 17 years an assignor is not estopped to limit the claims of his as-signee’s patent where the disclosures of the patent lie in the public domain by virtue of a prior expired patent. I cannot conclude that prior art made available by the expiration of a patent monopoly by the terms of the patent statute is entitled to greater weight in effecting the limitation of claims than any other prior art. Mr. Justice Reed and Mr. Justice Frankfurter1 indicated somewhat similar views in their dissenting opinions in Marcalus, 326 U.S. respectively at page 258 and page 263, 66 S.Ct. at pages 105 and 107.
But, quite aside from the foregoing, under the new Patent Act, in effect January 1, 1953, approximately fifteen months before the judgment in the instant case was handed down, the granting of a patent monopoly was proscribed where there was only an unobvious advance over the prior art: for example, where the patent disclosed only prior art plus mere mechanical skill or ingenuity.2 It appears, therefore, that at the time of the judgment of the court below there was a statutory prohibition of the sort specifically referred to by Mr. Chief-Justice Stone in Marcalus. An attack by way of limitation of claims based upon an existing statutory prohibition as here therefore should be allowed on the basis of the entire existing art. The fundamental law itself authorizes the attack. Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution.
For the reasons stated I dissent from the limiting views expressed in the majority-'opinion. I agree with the majority, however, that the judgment should be vacated and the cause remanded for further treatment.

. Mr. Justice Frankfurter stated in Marcalus as a basis for his dissent, 326 U.S. at pages 258-259, 66 S.Ct. at page. 106: “When by a fair and free bargain a man sells something to another, it hardly lies in his mouth to say, ‘I have sold you nothing.’ It certainly offends the rudimentary sense of justice for courts to support one who purports to sell something to another in saying ‘What I have sold you is worthless,’ even though he did not expressly promise that what' he sold had worth.”
The - situation at bar is very different, however, from those which were before the Supreme Court in Marcalus and Formica. In the Marcalus case, Marcalus sold his patent to his own company for stock. In Formica, it was said that “ * * * an assignor of a patent right is estopped to attack the utility, novelty or validity of a patented invention which he has assigned or granted as against any one claiming the right under his assignment or grant.” 266 U.S. at page 349, 45 S.Ct. at page 119. But here, by analogy, Nalco is the vendor and Hall, the vendee: Nalco, the assignor, and Hall, the assignee.

. It appears from the Reviser’s Note, cited to Section 103, Title 35, U.S.C., that the provisions of Section 103 are a statutory expression of the law as it existed prior to January 1, 1953.