Court Opinion

ID: 9641888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:42:29.369393+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:40.054705
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
The petition for rehearing calls attention to the fact that while our original opinion concedes validity to the Sloper patent, No. 1487033, and rejects the contention that it is infringed by the pneumatic retaining means of defendant’s Nichols expander, no specific holding is incorporated therein with respect to claims 1-4 of Sloper, which include no element operating as a retaining means, but disclose subcombinations, complete in themselves. Such subcombinations, it is asserted, may be the subjects of valid claims under the rule of White v. Dunbar, 119 U. S. 47, 51, 7 S. Ct. 72, 30 L. Ed. 303, and without regard to whether the claims in themselves disclose an operable device. Deering v. Winona Harvester Works, 155 U. S. 286, 302, 15 S. Ct. 118, 39 L. Ed. 153.
Our failure to deal fully with Sloper is perhaps due to the emphasis in brief and argument upon the question of infringement, and the insistence of the petitioner upon the equivalency of the Nichols pneumatic tube to the Sloper mechanical ring, notwithstanding Sloper’s express disclaimer of the former. Additional comment on Sloper is therefore indicated.
Whether the Sloper claims 1-4 are to be limited to the particular retaining means disclosed in the drawings and described in the specifications, or whether they are to be so broadly construed as to include any and all retaining means, we are not required to decide. Certainly in the state of the art, no teaching of commercially practical value is contributed to the industry, by claims which describe but a shaping means, while silent as to means or mechanism by which tire shape may, economically and with required precision, be retained until “set” by vulcanization. Accepting the broader construction, we fail to sense invention in claims 1-4 of Sloper and are in accord with both master and court below, in denying them validity, on the ground that they show no more than routine mechanical advance over Gammeter patent in suit.
Gammeter shaped by vacuum, with the aid of movable platens in sealing contact with the upper and lower edges of the pulley band. Sloper’s subcombination claims disclose shaping by super-atmospheric pressure with the aid of platens, in similar contact with the band. We pointed out in our discussion of Gammeter that vacuum and pressure shaping are but reciprocal processes and that the petitioner’s argument for validity of claim 17 in Gammeter was necessarily based on their equivalency. We conceded validity to Gammeter’s combination of movable platens in sealed contact with the edges of the band, and the air-tight vacuum box enveloping it. Given Gammeter, however, the sealing of the pulley band, the movable platens to force its bead edges toward each other, and their sealing contact with the bead edges are all at hand for the skilled mechanic. The only extemporizing required was to provide platens of size to seal the openings in the pulley band instead of those in the vacuum box, and to reverse air control so as to achieve compression rather than vacuum. Neither step rose to invention.
*963Gammeter failed, we thought, to sense or, sensing it, to solve the problem of placing an operable retaining device in a sealed chamber, if his claim 17 was as broad as contended. This we thought was not obvious, and this we conceived to be the problem to which Sloper chiefly addressed himself. In no other respect does our original opinion indicate solution by Sloper of that which was beyond Gammeter.
Claims 1-4 of Sloper we hold to be invalid, but no change is thereby required in our direction to the District Court.
The petition for rehearing is therefore denied,