Court Opinion

ID: 9419454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:34.048464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.206001
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
dissenting:
Those who strive to produce and distribute goods in a system of free competitive enterprise should not be handicapped by patents based on a “shadow of a shade of an idea.” Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U. S. 192, 200. The practice of granting patents for microscopic structural or *280mechanical improvements inevitably must reduce the United States Patent Office to a mass production factory for unearned special privileges which serve no purpose except unfairly to harass the honest pursuit of business. If the patentee here has “discovered” anything, it is that the creamy substance in a dry cell will not leak through a steel jacket which covers and is securely fastened to the ends of the cell. Eor that alleged discovery this patent is today upheld. I do not deny that someone, somewhere, sometime, made the discovery that liquids would not leak through leak-proof solids. My trouble is that, despite findings to the contrary,1 cannot agree that this patentee is that discoverer. My disagreement is not based solely on the narrow ground that the record shows previous patents have been issued to others who put jackets of metal and other substances around dry cells. Antiquarians tell us that the use of solid containers to hold liquids predated the dawn of written history. That the problem of the quality and strength of the walls of such containers was one to which ancient people turned their attention appears from the widespread currency at an early age of the maxim that “new wine should not be put in old bottles.” It is impossible for me to believe that Congress intended to grant monopoly privileges to persons who do no more than apply knowledge which has for centuries been the universal possession of all the earth’s people—even those of the most primitive civilizations.
Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Murphy concur in this opinion.
Mr. Justice Jackson is of opinion the judgment below should be reversed for the reason that, invention being *281doubtful, the Court of Appeals relied upon commercial success of the product without adequate findings or evidence as to whether such alleged success was due to the product or to the phenomenal increase in demand due to the war and to the advantages of marketing contracts with mail-order houses.

This Court in 1884 declared that “whether the thing patented amounts to a patentable invention” is a question of law to be decided by the courts. Mahn v. Harwood, 112 U. S. 354, 358. On numerous occasions both before and since that case, this Court has *281invalidated patents on the ground that the alleged discoveries failed to measure up to the legal standards for invention. See cases collected United States Supreme Court Digest (West 1943), Patents, Vol. 11, Par. 16-74.