Court Opinion

ID: 9448430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:35:43.588361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:25.851289
License: Public Domain

RICH, Judge
(dissenting).
Upon review of the record and the views of the examiner and the Board of Appeals I observe what, to me, are certain fatal defects in the reasoning by which they reached the conclusion that the invention defined by the claims on appeal is unpatentable. Appellant has more than adequately pointed out these defects in his brief and, in my judgment, the brief of the Patent Office Solicitor, thereafter filed, either failed to answer them or avoided discussion of them.
*934The situation as it appears to me is this:
■ Alford, a man of great skill and experience and a recognized expert in the radio field, by making what appears through hindsight to be a relatively simple mechanical change,» combined certain features old in this art to obtain improved electrical results and advantages.
The principal alleged advantage, constantly reiterated in the application, is reduction in leakage of radiation from already known coaxial choke couplers used in coaxial lines for transmitting high to very high radio frequencies. As Alford’s brief points out, coaxial choke couplers were “conventional”, they couple high frequency energy from one coaxial line to another while insulation separates both the inner and outer conductors of one line from those of the other. Such couplers had insulated sleeve joints in the inner and outer conductors and it was also known to make the sleeves of a length corresponding to a quarter wavelength, for the mean wavelength of the frequency band to be conducted, for reasons well known to the art. This is no part of the invention.
As Alford’s brief frankly states, it was also known at the time he made his invention, and as shown by the Garfitt British patent, to use annular disc or flange capacity (i. e. separated and insulated) joints of quarter wavelength dimension in coupling hollow tubes used as wave guides to conduct oscillatory electromagnetic energy at ultra-high frequencies. Garfitt shows such a disc joint and he also shows a sleeve joint and that their dimension is a quarter wavelength; and he says that the reason one uses such a joint (either sleeve or disc) is “to reduce energy leakage.” The important thing to notice about the Garfitt disclosure is, however, that his teaching is that so far as minimizing leakage is concerned, it doesn’t make any difference which kind of joint you use.
Now Alford was not just inventing joints. What he was trying to do and in fact did was to design a coaxial choke coupler with reduced radiation leakage— less leakage than is present in the conventional coaxial choke couplers with two sleeve joints.
The invention which he made and is claiming in the claims on appeal is a new combination, not a flange joint. The combination is a coupler with all the known features of coaxial choke couplers such as inner and outer conductors and spacing filled with insulation and joints of quarter wave length dimensions but wherein the inner conductor joint or coupling is a sleeve joint and the outer tubular conductor joint is a disc or flange joint. This combination was unknown to the art. It is the combination which produces the improved results.1 The two coaxial coupler references show sleeve joints in both conductors. Garfitt shows a joint in the outer tubular wave guide which can be either sleeve or disc — with no reason for preferring either — and no joint whatever in his inner conductor, since he does not have the kind of a coaxial choke coupler with which Alford is concerned.
Viewed by hindsight, and as a mere mechanical construction, the new combination may appear to be a slight change and one which would perhaps be of no significance to the art but for the fact that it produces advantageous results which the prior art does not suggest could be achieved by the change made.
Alford invented a coaxial choke coupling that reduced radiation leakage loss by combining old elements in a new way which the art did not suggest doing. At *935least in my view of the matter the art did not suggest doing i-t. The majority would perhaps say, with the Patent Office, that Garfitt suggests doing it but I challenge such a view. The art was already using outer conductor sleeve joints in choke couplings. Garfitt shows both sleeve and disc couplings and says, in effect, that if they are quarter wave length they both reduce leakage equally well. So clearly this patent contains no suggestion to use a disc coupling in place of a sleeve joint in the outer conductor of a choke coupling to reduce leakage further than it has already been reduced (or, more accurately, minimized) by the use of the supposedly equally good sleeve joint.
Challenged with the proposition that the substitution was obvious, Alford countered with the time-honored answer that even if it appeared so on its face it nevertheless resulted in a patentable invention since the advantages produced were substantial and unpredictable, establishing them by affidavit evidence. I have no doubt that under a long line of cases in this court, as well as in other courts, such proof with respect to an admittedly new combination would have been found acceptable to establish patentability prior to 1952, when the requirement of “invention” was put into the statute, 35 U.S.C. § 103, in terms of what would be unobvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made. In re Holt, 162 F.2d 472, 34 CCPA 1129. Since section 103 clearly was not included in the statute for the purpose of making it more difficult for the inventors of new combinations to obtain patents on their inventions which produce new, unexpected, and advantageous results which would (by virtue of unexpectedness) not have been obvious, I can see no reason for ignoring established case law. A casual perusal of the legislative history of section 103 will show that the intent was that it should have exactly the opposite effect it is being given in this case.
The majority appears to accept the adequacy of Alford’s evidence of advantages, saying:
“Although the examiner and the board have questioned the significance of a comparative test between these two devices [the prior art coupler with inner and outer sleeve joints and applicant’s coupler], they do not dispute appellant’s contention * * * that the tested device having a disc joint in its outer conductor had less leakage loss than the tested device using a sleeve joint in the outer conductor.” [My emphasis.]
The majority proceeds from an examination and apparent acceptance of appellant’s contention to the following conclusion, which I regard as wholly unjustified on the record before us:
“A person of ordinary skill in the art, with the pbjective of providing a coaxial coupler for use in the range or frequencies here involved, would have found in Garfitt a suggestion that a disc type joint, as well as a sleeve type joint, could be used to reduce energy leakage or radiation from the separated outer conductor, such as the outer conductor of the Espley or Salisbury coupler. There being no disclosure in Garfitt that either one of these joints [sleeve or disc] is more effective than the other in reducing leakage, it is our opinion that it would have been obvious to construct a coupler using each of the outer joints disclosed by that reference and make comparative tests of leakage to determine which construction was the most effective for the purpose at hand. Upon tests showing, as appellant’s report [the affidavit evidence] indicates they would, that the coupler with the disc joint permits less leakage, it would be obvious for the worker to choose that construction. As a matter of fact, the tests that appellant did make had that effect.” [My emphasis.]
*936The point I want first to emphasize in this rather cart-before-the-horse analysis of the situation is that, by the majority’s own reasoning, the point at which it became obvious what the construction of the coupler should be was at the very end of a considerable piece of research consisting of deciding to build two different couplers, building them, testing them, and determining which was best. It is usually thought that it is the purpose of the patent system to encourage such research, not to deprive people of patents because they have carried it on successfully.
The next point is, that by the majority’s own admission, the Garfitt patent does not suggest that a disc joint is any more effective in minimizing leakage of radiation than a sleeve joint. Since the art already had sleeve joints in coaxial choke couplers, inside and out, there is absolutely no suggestion in Garfitt to change that construction, and it is on the basis that such a suggestion exists that the Patent Office rejected the claims on a combination of either Espley or Salisbury with Garfitt.
In any case, the majority approach to the problem nullifies the rule of law which has long been followed that the seeming obviousness of a combination, or a product, can be overcome by proof of unexpected advantageous results and the majority never denies the existence of such results in this case. Bypassing case law, the majority rests its decision on section 103, which was intended to aid the discoverers of such new and unexpected results. First it finds the structure obvious and then ignores the advantageous unexpected properties, as of any legal significance whatever, by saying that the structure would “inherently provide the * * * results and properties.” The codification of the former requirement of “invention” in section 103 was not intended to effect a substitution for one of the oldest positive indicators of the presence of patentable subject matter, namely, proven unexpected technical advantages, of the a priori judgment of non-technical' courts as to the seeming obviousness to them of highly refined scientific instruments and devices.
In voicing this theory of obvious structure with “inherent” advantages — advantages which are to be ignored in deciding the issue of patentability — the majority is uncritically accepting the theory first propounded by the examiner who said:
“The contention that the combination produces a new and unexpected result is not considered persuasive since the result set forth by applicant is inherent in the obvious combination of the references and hence does not confer patentability on the claimed combination.” [My emphasis.]
What he meant, of course, was that the advantages, the existence of which he did not deny, were inherent in applicant’s claimed invention which, in his view, would have been obvious over the references as he combined them in making the rejection. In other words, he too ignored the advantages. In fact he said in his answer that “this improvement * * * has no bearing on the rejection of the instant case which is on a combination of references,” which is something of a non sequitur.
As to this combination-of-references rejection and the significance of the affidavit proof, the board had a different idea. It said, “assuming arguendo that the affidavit establishes that the instant joint in the external cylindrical conductor is less lossy than the joint in the outer conductors of either Salisbury or Espley,” the comparative test should have been made “between the instant device and the device of Garfitt; or Salisbury or Espley modified in the light of Garfitt.” In the absence of such data, the board expressed its intention to ignore the tests.
As to making a comparative test with Garfitt on radiation loss, I can see no possibility of this because Garfitt does not have a coaxial choke coupler at all, nor a coaxial transmission line.
As to the suggested comparison between the claimed coupler and the coupler *937of either Salisbury or Espley modified in the light of Garfitt, this is foolishness. As appellant’s brief points out in Point III, it “is nothing more than a requirement to compare the results of the invention with the results of the invention.”
Whatever the rationalizations behind the various refusals in this case to take into consideration the unexpected advantageous results and give them legal effect, such refusal is contrary to long and well established law.
This is, in my opinion, a clear case for reversal.

. In truth this would appear to be something of an over-simplification since a full explanation of why there is an improvement in the radiation leakage situation requires going into much greater detail such as that set forth in the 5 printed pages of the Alford affidavit exhibit and its accompanying illustrations and graphs. It appears to me that it was Alford’s contribution to the art, as appears from that exhibit, that “Disc line couplers have lower radiation for a given value of low-frequency capacitance.” I find no suggestion of this phenomenon in the prior art of record, but rather a contrary indication.