Court Opinion

ID: 9446796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:18:36.322201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:47.180155
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from the opinion of my colleagues because tested by the standard of invention this court adopted in Lyon v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., 2 Cir., 1955, 224 F.2d 530, certiorari denied 1955, 350 U.S. 911, 76 S.Ct. 193, 100 L.Ed. 799, the Ashton poultry tag patent No. 2,611,198 is valid. I agree with Judge Dawson’s holding and with the reasons he has stated in his thorough and lucid opinion reported at 160 F.Supp. 581.
The Ashton patent covers a simple tag structure consisting of a single piece of thin bendable metal, the main portion of which has an opening near one end. The other end, which tapers to a tongue, is a toggle constructed of two sections joined by a bendable knee. When the knee is pressed against the main portion the tongue flattens out so that its tip engages the opening and holds the tag fast to the poultry skin which has been clamped between the opening and the tongue end. In the more technical language of claim 6 the invention is described thus:
“6. A tag structure comprising a main portion having an aperture, a locking tongue having a tip, said tongue extending normally at an angle with respect to said main portion and being integral therewith, said tongue comprising two sections joined to each other by a bendable knee, whereby said two sections form a toggle, which when moved *845against said main portion flattens out and lengthens to thereby bring about engagement of said tip of said tongue with said aperture.”
This claimed invention has been very useful in the poultry business as the tag is easily and quickly attached to the breast of a fowl, lies flat so that the legend is easily read and can be easily removed.
While metal tags of all kinds and descriptions are old in the poultry industry and many others, it is the use of the toggle principle and the pressure which is thus continuously applied to clamp the poultry skin firmly against the aperture, which is the essence of the claimed invention of the Ashton patent. The device seems disarmingly simple but the record amply supports Stoffel’s contentions that Ashton’s tag filled a long existing need for a tag easy to attach and to remove; that Ashton’s tag was far superior to any previously made, and that its overwhelming acceptance since 1949 is conclusive evidence of its superiority and dispels any possible doubts that it constitutes invention.
The appellant claims, and my colleagues agree, that Ashton’s tag lacks patentable invention because it does nothing more than apply the principle of the toggle and its endwise pressure. It is true that where a principle, such as the toggle, is common to many dissimilar fields, its application to a new field may involve no more than ordinary mechanical skill. See, e. g., Welsh Mfg. Co. v. Sunware Products, 2 Cir., 1956, 236 F.2d 225, 226. But Ashton, by using the toggle action in his poultry tag to force the tongue against an aperture so as to catch and hold fast the poultry skin which comes between without piercing it, solved many difficulties of long standing in the poultry tagging business which had not previously yielded to continuous research and experiment. In such circumstances it is plain that, familiar though the toggle joint may be, it was not “reasonably obvious to one skilled in the art.”
The difficulties with the prior tags, scores of which were in evidence, were the subject of comment and complaint over many years. Thus housewives complained that the tags were very difficult to remove and caused them to break their fingernails. Taggers also complained that the piercing-type tags injured the skin and caused the fowl to be downgraded, and that because the tags did not lie flat they caused damage to themselves and the information they bore as well as to the bird, and that, although breast tagging was most desirable, the old tags were primarily only suitable for use on the wing.
Brooks, in business since 1873, had used hundreds of different seals and had taken out about seventy-five patents in this field in an effort to solve these problems. Beginning in 1940 or 1941 Hans Stoffel, the head of Brooks’ primary competitor, Stoffel Seals Corporation, also worked on a solution, and he had the assistance of one Stelzer. The United States and Canadian Departments of Agriculture for a considerable time also pursued similar experiments to develop a more satisfactory tag in order to encourage their programs for the grading and marking of poultry.
Of all who sought a workable solution, only Ashton devised a satisfactory product to meet the needs of all. His tag is lighter, cheaper to manufacture, store, ship and sell, more readily applied (3,00(’ per hour), lies flat, may be applied to breast or wing, won’t pierce and apparently won’t break fingernails. So successful was Ashton’s solution, that since 1949, when production of his tag was commenced, these tags have taken over more than 90% of the market, including the three largest processors, Armour and Co., Swift & Co., and Wilson & Co., and their share of the market was still increasing when this case was tried in December 1957.
Thus while this little tag may seem at first glance very simple and obvious, a large and growing industry sought it continuously and unsuccessfully for many *846years. Beside it the old tags, used for so long, are clumsy, expensive, inefficient and relatively difficult and unsafe to handle, and they cannot compete with it in the market place.
In my opinion the circumstances of the long search for a satisfactory solution, plus its extraordinary commercial success once it was marketed, leave no doubt that this poultry tag was much needed and that its advantages are so striking and such an advance over the prior art that invention has been established. Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. United States Plywood Co., 2 Cir., 1958, 258 F.2d 124, 133, certiorari denied 1958, 358 U.S. 884, 79 S.Ct. 124, 3 L.Ed.2d 112; Technical Tape Corp. v. Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co., 2 Cir., 1957, 247 F.2d 343, 347, certiorari denied 1957, 355 U.S. 952, 78 S.Ct. 537, 2 L.Ed.2d 529.
Since the 1952 Amendment to the Patent Laws, 35 U.S.C. § 1 et seq., and the codification of the rule that a duly issued patent is to be presumed valid, 35 U.S.C. § 282, courts must no longer approach the consideration of what is invention with specially restrictive judicial views of inventiveness. Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. United States Plywood Co., supra, 258 F.2d at page 133; Lyon v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., supra. The establishment of a more liberal standard than the “flash of creative genius” doctrine enunciated in the Cuno case was apparently one of the principal reasons why Congress passed the 1952 Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. § 101 ff., especially § 103. See e. g., Reviser’s Note to § 103, 2d Para.; Note, 44 Georgetown L.J. 100 (1955); Harris, Some Aspects of Legislative Intent of the Patent Act of 1952, 23 Geo. Wash.L.Rev. 658, 676 ff. (1955). We so held in Lyon v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., supra, where the Cuno decision was cited as “the furthest departure” (224 F.2d 536) from the test of Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 1851, 11 How. 248, 267, 13 L.Ed. 683, to which the 1952 enactment was held to have returned devoid of intervening glosses.
I do not understand that Judge Clark’s opinion would advance a standard of invention any different from that which we unanimously expressed in Lyon v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., supra, which was reaffirmed by us in Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. United States Plywood Co., supra; Magnus Harmonica Corp. v. Lapin, 2 Cir., 1956, 236 F.2d 285, 296; Welsh Mfg. Co. v. Sunware Products, supra; Wilson Athletic Goods Mfg. Co. v. Kennedy Sporting Goods, 2 Cir., 1956, 233 F.2d 280; Vermont Structural Slate Co. v. Tatko Bros., 2 Cir., 1956, 233 F.2d 9; Gentzel v. Manning, 2 Cir., 1956, 230 F.2d 341. Thus we have recognized that the 1952 Patent Act has overruled Picard v. United Aircraft Corp., 2 Cir., 1942, 128 F.2d 632, and that Congress has made it clear that what was said in Cuno Engineering Corp. v. Automatic Devices Corp., 1941, 314 U.S. 84, 91, 62 S.Ct. 37, 86 L.Ed. 58, about a “flash of creative genius” was not a proper test of invention. If this be only codification at least we now start with 1952 and we no longer need consider decisions that look the other way.
As Judge Kalodner pointed out for the Third Circuit sitting en banc in R. M. Palmer Co. v. Luden’s, Inc., 1956, 236 F.2d 496, 500, whether the 1952 amendments were a codification rather than a change in existing law depends entirely on what view any particular circuit had taken prior to 1952. He concluded with “There is no longer any doubt that the ‘flash of genius’ [test] has been laid to rest,” and placed its determination in part on “the sensitive observations of” the Lyon case.
In my view the citation of the Cuno case in Judge Clark’s footnotes is apt to be misleading as the implications of its “flash of creative genius” phrase, whether dictum or not, has been repudiated by the paramount authority of the Congress. Other circuits which have expressly adopted the analysis of Lyon v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., supra, are the District of Columbia, L-O-F Glass Fibers Co. v. Watson, 1955, 97 U.S.App.*847D.C. 69, 228 F.2d 40, 47 and note 14; Third Circuit, R. M. Palmer Co. v. Luden’s, Inc., 1956, 236 F.2d 496, 500; Fourth Circuit, Brown v. Brock, 1957, 240 F.2d 723. Only the First Circuit appears to have considered and rejected it. See, e. g., Hawley Products Co. v. United States Trunk, 1958, 259 F.2d 69.
As I would find the patent not invalid for lack of invention, it is necessary to discuss other claims of the appellant.
Brooks urges not only that the Ashton tag is not invention, but also that it was anticipated by the Bicknell paper clasp patent No. 1,163,127 of 1915 and the Buck and Barnes laundry tag patent No. 492,085 of 1893. I do not agree.
As Judge Dawson points out, these two prior patents both involve the clip principle in the execution of which the clip is made fast to the article by piercing it. Neither of these earlier patents uses the toggle or principle to hold the tag in place, without the necessity of piercing, by means of continuous endwise pressure. Both prior patents employed a sharp point designed to penetrate the paper or material and secure itself on the other side of the penetration.
Bicknell employed a “tapering tongue” which was set at an angle of almost 90 degrees to the upper part of the clasp; this provided for a downward puncturing of the paper when the clasp was pressed, after which the tongue locked under the end. There was no application whatever of the continuous endwise pressure of the toggle principle. When the top of the Bicknell paper clasp is pushed down the tongue does not operate as a toggle to hold fast by reason of the great pressure which the tongue exerts in the reverse angular position as shown in Figure 5 of the Ashton patent. Even the appellant’s expert, Judah B. Felshin, was constrained to admit at trial that modifications would be necessary before any toggle action would result from a practice of the Bicknell patent.
The great difference between the Bicknell and Ashton patents is best understood by comparison of the ease with which the Bicknell fastener slips out and the relative difficulty of releasing the Ashton poultry tag, and the fact that the purpose of Bicknell is to pierce while Ashton is designed in order to avoid piercing.
The Buck and Barnes laundry tag patent likewise bears little resemblance to Ashton. There the two teeth at one end of the tag are pressed under the curved lip of the other end of the tag after piercing the cloth which lies between. The teeth are not at an angle but are merely at the end of the surface, and no endwise pressure against the teeth is developed by pressing them under the curved lip. Thus, despite appellant’s claim that this “inherently provides a toggle action,” it seems to me to be far removed from suggesting any. There is nothing in the prior art which anticipated the teaching of Ashton’s patent.
The appellant also urges that relief should be denied Stoffel because of unclean hands in connection with the filing of another application relating to similar poultry tags by its employee Stelzer. I agree with Judge Dawson that the appellee’s actions were proper, especially in view of the fact that it owned all the rights to both the Ashton and the Stelzer applications on which the Patent Office issued patents the same day and the net result is that there has been no extension of the patent monopoly. I also agree with Judge Dawson that there is no basis for holding that the appellee elected the Stelzer patent as against the Ashton patent.
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment below.