Court Opinion

ID: 9473182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:22:09.540138+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:22.487181
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Rich’s opinion but write separately because of the need to explain more in detail why, to my mind, the “secondary considerations” do not in this case outbalance the “clear and very strong case of obviousness based on admissions and the teachings of the new references” (as the majority opinion properly puts it). The District Court found (a) “convincing evidence” that the invention involved here “filled a long felt and serious need in the reinforced concrete pipe industry”; (b) this invention had a strong impact on that industry (in this country) in that “virtually every manufacturer of wire mesh” for this kind of pipe not only sought and obtained a license but also abandoned prior art methods of bending and welding bells in reinforcement cages; and (c) there was sufficient motivation and effort toward discovering a new method but this was not accomplished for a considerable period of time.
Appellants correctly point out that these findings (particularly those as to the supplanting of prior methods) are overstated, but there can be no doubt that the invention of the ’036 patent became very sue-cessful and has been much used. Nevertheless, I agree that this ample fulfillment of need does not prevail to show non-obviousness. First, as Judge Rich’s opinion shows, the invention was very, very clearly foreshadowed by the pertinent teachings of the German and French patents. Second, it seems to me not significant (though the trial court thought it very important) that the invention “wasn’t developed sooner.” The simple fact probably is that those teachings of the German and French patents were actually not well-known even in the pertinent art, but under the settled rule of § 103 that fact is irrelevant — they were part-and-parcel of the prior art even if they were not in fact well-known in the United States; they are an integral part of the presumed knowledge. To me, this lag between “actual knowledge” and ‘presumed knowledge,” not legal non-obvious-ness_together with the consideration mentioned by Judge Rich near the end of his opinion — adequately explains the delay in the utilization of the invention. Third, the quick acceptance of the invention, once it was disclosed in this country, should be explained on the same basis. If the pertinent teachings of the German and French patents had been widely circulated to the wire reinforcement art in this country immediately after those patents issued abroad, I judge that the invention at issue would have been made very much earlier and would have attained like success, These are the reasons, in my view, why the “secondary considerations” fail to overcome the very strong case of obviousness from the admissions and the teachings of the references considered in the prevailing opinion,