Court Opinion

ID: 9448380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:34:05.54277+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:24.601247
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. My difficulty centers in the issue of validity. Mechanical combination patents in this court have met with little recent success. See, for example, Briggs & Stratton Corporation v. Clinton Machine Co., 8 Cir., 1957, 247 F.2d 397, cert. den. 355 U.S. 914, 78 S.Ct. 344, 2 L.Ed.2d 274. Judge San-born’s concurring opinion in that case clearly outlines the situation and the decided cases and states, 247 F.2d p. 401, that since Cuno Engineering Corp. v. Automatic Devices Corp., 1941, 314 U.S. 84, 62 S.Ct. 37, 86 L.Ed. 58, “the amount of originality and ingenuity, over and beyond novelty and utility, which will constitute invention necessary to sustain a patent for a combination of old elements in a crowded art, has increased”. Although the district court here, in con*853trast to the Briggs & Stratton case, concluded that the patent was valid, I do not find support in the record to satisfy me, at least, that the device here has inventive aspects sufficient to justify patent protection. Nor am I satisfied that it was not anticipated by the Clark Patent No. 1,726,525.