Court Opinion

ID: 9449349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:10:12.931233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:48.430242
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This ease would appear to fall precisely within the terms of 35 U.S.C. § 183 —quoted in note 1 of the opinion, supra —a broadly remedial statute which is the basis for district court jurisdiction here. My brothers reach a contrary result by interpolating into the statute a phrase which is not there and which is actually quite inappropriate. By that interpolation they would limit the operation of the statute to compensation for the unauthorized use by the government of a patent covered by a secrecy order. So compensation for authorized use of such a patent (found to be the situation here) may be obtained only entirely outside the statute by an action in the Court of Claims in ordinary course. I shall discuss below the inappropriateness of this gratuitous embellishment on a self-contained statute and consequent drastic limitation of its field of operation. But first I wish to point out its more natural operation as illustrated in this case under the sound interpretation of Chief Judge Ryan below, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 175 F.Supp. 230, Id., D.C., 197 F.Supp. 756.
That natural operation is simply to apply to the conceded facts of the ease the statute as it is written. Under 35 U.S.C. § 183 what is to be settled by the process there set out of administrative award, followed by court action, if necessary in the Court of Claims or an appropriate district court, is compensation to the inventor for the use of the invention by the government “resulting from his disclosure.” “Disclosure” is defined in 35 U.S. C. § 181 — substantially quoted in note 2 of the opinion — and clearly means (as the opinion states) the disclosure of the invention initially by the inventor in his patent application, but then made secret by the secrecy order except as the Commissioner of Patents must make it available for inspection by the several defense agencies named in the statute. It is to be particularly noted that this limited, but crucial, disclosure is mandatory on the part of the Commissioner and flows automatically from the imposition of the secrecy order on the patent. There are no qualifications or limitations because of prior knowledge or contract negotiations or the like.
Here in my view is where my brothers have made a wrong turning. They apparently adopt a sort of man-in-the-street interpretation of disclosure as not being possible of something already known to the disclosee through prior negotiations. But this overlooks the statutory scheme making this a word of art and defining a mandatory act upon which the government’s use of the secret invention must depend. Hence in the present ease, which deals not with plaintiff’s own sales to the government — admittedly it has been amply paid for those and that account closed- — but with use of the invention, at government behest, for the additional bomb sights produced by the Eastman Kodak Company, the right to compensation rests wholly on the statutory disclosure. As the statute makes abundantly clear, the only disclosure which can be had once the secrecy order is entered is that which the statute defines; and prior negotiations, if any, are superseded by or merged in that disclosure. So here the Eastman bomb sights were actually produced under patent claim 4, which was claim 32 of the patent application. This was the exact stipulation of the parties before trial. Moreover, the government admitted use under this patent claim, and the court found accordingly. Farrand Optical Co. v. United States, D.C.S.D. N.Y., 175 F.Supp. 230, 233; Id., D.C., 197 F.Supp. 756, 758. This is the only basis upon which a legal claim for compensation can be made for government use of a patent covered by a secrecy order; and this stipulation, admission, *884and finding, I submit, completely^dispose ■of the jurisdictional issue.
Now the phrase given the heavy burden of upsetting this natural result by my brothers, “unauthorized use by the government,” would seem inept in any event. We know what a rich bonanza defense work is to business corporations, great and small; “unauthorized” can at most refer only to those few concerns which have not yet had defense opportunities and the chance to negotiate therefor. So to restrict § 183 in this fashion is to leave to that statute a decidedly limited field of operation in practice. But actually the phrase cannot be appropriate at all, for § 183 makes all such governmental use authorized, once the wheels are set in motion by the inventor’s voluntary disclosure of a defense invention in his patent application, followed by the secrecy order. Actually what my brothers undoubtedly mean is an invention disclosed to the government by negotiation or contract before ever the secrecy order is entered. As thus redefined, the problem acquires understandable form; but the difficulties of the interpretation also become obvious. For the troublesome question arises how much by way of negotiation or contract is necessary to oust the statute of operation. Thus it is to be noted that in Halpern v. United States, 2 Cir., 258 F.2d 36, 37, the inventor “approached the Office of Scientific and Research Development and explained the scientific principles of his invention.” The actual contract for exploitation was then made with .the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nevertheless, contrary to the result here, we upheld the district court’s jurisdiction.
While this plaintiff did have a contract with the government, it is difficult to see how that can function to exclude the operation of § 183 if the negotiations in the Halpern case did not do so. As the court found, the plaintiff’s royalty-free license to the government expired on March 2, 1946 — long before the secrecy order of February 23, 1949, and the deliveries of bomb sights to the government by both plaintiff and Eastman, which occurred from 1950 to 1960. D.C. S.D.N.Y., 175 F.Supp. at page 238; Id., D.C., 197 F.Supp. at pages 765-768, 771-772; Moreover, the contract does not cover the matter here crucial, namely, the use of the patent as disclosed by the government to a third party, to wit, Eastman, and the proper compensation for such use. It seems wholly obvious that to solve the issues now actually before us resort can be had only to the provisions of the Invention Secrecy Act, and there is nothing in the contract to supply the gap.* Hence the premise upon which my brothers build their case is entirely inadequate, while the simpler interpretation of the statute employed below gives a complete justification for the district court’s holding.
Thus, as I have already indicated, the decision herein seems to me contrary in substantial point to our holding in Halpern v. United States, supra, 2 Cir., 258 F.2d 36. It also sets at naught the policy stressed in Congressional debates and emphasized in the Halpern case and the earlier case of Robinson v. United States, 2 Cir., 236 F.2d 24, of affording inventors the incentive of not merely the administrative remedy and delayed period of limitation of the statute, but also the presence of a court close at hand for redress if court action becomes necessary. I can see no functional reason for the distinction in available remedy now developed by my brothers. Every argument for district court review in the case where there has been no prior negotiation would seem to apply perhaps even more strongly where there has been some *885negotiation, followed by a present dispute. Only stern compulsion of the statute should force the distinction upon us. And yet the statute itself does not even hint at the distinction, but from its background and language strongly persuades to the absence of distinction. One can only suggest again that judicial rewriting of Congressional acts is an activity indeed fraught with peril.
Other considerations adverted to in the opinion as makeweights for the conclusion seem to me in the main to cut the other way. Admittedly the legislative history gives no decisive support for my brothers’ holding. But the change in the 1951 act, omitting the requirement of a voluntary tender of his invention by the patent applicant and substituting the present mandatory features of the law, far from making the Congressional purpose in favor of my brothers’ conclusion “too clear for doubt,” surely does quite the contrary. For the mandatory features of the present statute are the basis for my view that this is a controlling governmental mandate based fundamentally on the government’s sovereign power of eminent domain to take whatever it may need for public safety and defense. And the special provisions giving a six-year period of limitation after the procedures for administrative award have been completed show how different this is from the ordinary patent infringement claim. I venture to say that had a patent owner sought compensation for either negotiated or unnegotiated use within the period allowed by § 181, but after an ordinary infringement suit was barred, we would indeed hesitate to say that his remedy was gone in one case, though not in the other.
While our discussion is necessarily directed to the issue of jurisdiction before us, the problem may have more extensive ramifications. The Invention Secrecy Act is broadly worded in terms of its coverage and gives the government means to make extensive use in times of peril of new defense inventions, of course making adequate payments to the inventors. Does my brothers’ argument mean that nevertheless inventors by contract may place serious restrictions upon the future use of their inventions by their government which will control beyond the terms of the extensive statutory grant? Perhaps the moral for both the government and the inventor is that neither should indulge in negotiations as to potential defense inventions, for both will retain more freedom for effective action if they deal with each other only at arm’s length! These are some of the problems which a strained and unnatural construction of the statutes is piling up for our future harassment. They also suggest the need for a quite different attack on the problem of statutory interpretation.
It is unfortunate that the herculean labors of the parties and the judge to bring this case to completion, as disclosed particularly in Judge Ryan’s second opinion, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 197 F.Supp. 756, are now to be thrown into the discard because of this adverse resolution of the preliminary issue of jurisdiction. It would have seemed to me better judicial economy, in case a doubt was thought to exist, to have resolved all presumptions in favor of jurisdiction. But in view of the turn the case has now taken, it would be futile for me to discuss the issues on the merits, and I shall refrain from doing so. I content myself with recording my vote in favor of upholding the jurisdiction of the district court.
Before CLARK, WATERMAN, MOORE, FRIENDLY, SMITH, KAUFMAN, HAYS and MARSHALL, Circuit Judges.

 The government made a special attack upon the jurisdiction of the court to adjudicate compensation for the bomb sights delivered by Eastman after the lifting of the secrecy order on December 2, 1954, and until institution of action in 1960. But if the statutory analysis here presented is correct, all these deliveries resulted from and were made possible by the disclosure pursuant to 35 U.S.O. § 181.