Court Opinion

ID: 9448338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:32:28.488876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:23.511482
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent. It is my view that the District Court’s Finding *77115 containing the statement, “The solution of the problem of providing power operation of a double-arm router required more than the ordinary skill of a machine tool designer,” is clearly erroneous if viewed as a finding of fact or is not justified as a conclusion of law if so classified under the doctrine of Armour & Co. v. Wilson & Co., 7 Cir., 274 F.2d 143.
The claims in issue relate to reversible power actuators for moving the inner and outer arms of the double-arm router and selectively controllable means for effecting energization of said actuators simultaneously to produce a resultant force on the follower so as to cause it to follow the contour of the template. Claim 20 limits the control of the two actuators to a “joy-stick” control means. Other claims not in issue relate to the peculiar means described in the patent for energizing the motors simultaneously so as to provide “for varying the magnitude and direction of the separate force components and thereby enable the direction of the. resultant force to be varied widely and throughout a complete circle.”
Consideration of the patent’s validity must be limited to the claims in issue and when these broad claims are considered in relation to the prior art, I am of the view that the use of motors as a substitute for manual operation of the router arms and a selective control means for operating the motors simultaneously to produce a resultant force on the follower would be obvious to a machine tool designer having the prior art in mind. The teachings of the prior art contained in the Taylor patent, number 2,069,189, the “sandslinger” patents issued to Clay, numbered 2,339,001 and 2,212,510, and to Beardsley and Piper, numbered 1,309,833, would make it obvious to one skilled in the art of tool designing that such disclosures could be applied to the double-arm router as set forth in claims 16, 17, 18 and 20 of the Mann patent.
The Beardsley and Piper patent, number 1,309,833, teaches the utilization of separate reversible power actuators on each arm of a sandslinger which structurally is similar to the double-arm router involved in the present patent, and also a selectively controllable means for energizing the actuators simultaneously to produce a resultant force causing the work-head to move in the desired direction. An improvement on the Beardsley and Piper patent was effected by Clay (Patent number 2,339,001) who devised a control means of a type identical with the ■ “joy-stick” control member defined in claim 20 of the patent in suit. The Beardsley and Piper and Clay patents show the same kind and arrangement of power actuators and control means for a double-arm machine that Mann adopted in replacing power for manually operated double-arm routers. The Taylor patent, number 2,069,189, also teaches the use of separate power actuators on two of the arms of a pantograph copying machine and a manually moveable control member — a selectively controllable means —for energizing the actuators simultaneously to produce a resultant force in the direction selected by the operator of the control member.
The claims in issue call for power actuators. Beardsley and Piper as well as Taylor teach the use of such actuators, The claims call for selective control of the energization of the actuators on both arms simultaneously. Clay teaches that this can be done. If the means disclosed in Clay were employed in a double-arm router, a resultant force would be obtained on the follower which would guide the follower around the template. It may well be that there is invention in the system of cylinders, pistons, valves, solenoids, and electrical circuits described in the patent and used in producing an alternately high or low torque on each arm so as to hold the follower against the template and at the same time move the cutter through the workpiece. That system is not involved in the claims in issue here. What is involved is the concept of simultaneously and selectively controlled actuators which cause the cutter of the router to move along a determined path. This concept is taught in the prior art of designing *772machinery having articulated arms. A double-armed router is such type machine and it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in this art to adopt the teachings of the prior art in motorizing the double-arm router.
For the foregoing reasons I would hold that Section 103 of the Patent Act requires a determination that the contested claims of the patent in suit are invalid as a matter of law; therefore, I would reverse.