Court Opinion

ID: 9450670
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:55:04.188539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:25.117584
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge
(dissenting).
In reaching its result, the majority opinion fails to give proper recognition to what seems to me to be the novel and unobvious inventive concept which underlies the particular embodiment thereof in the dyestuff here in issue. That concept is the provision of a single dyestuff which will dye either wool or cellulose. There is no teaching of such a dye in anything of record except appellants’ own disclosure. To the extent such a dyestuff possesses cellulosic dyeing properties it is clearly unobvious and this issue was decided in favor of the applicant by the board when it stated:
“If considered entirely on the basis of the claimed compounds being dyes for cellulose, it is not apparent to us how the secondary references suggest to one skilled in the art that the linking sulfone group of the Hoechst British patent can be replaced by a linking amide group and the resulting dyes still be expected to have the unusual property of being able to dye cellulose fibers. The dyes of the secondary references are not disclosed as being fixable on cellulose fibers when treated with an alkaline substance.”
In failing to give proper weight to a most significant and admittedly unob-vious property of the claimed dyestuff, it seems to me the court is turning its back on what I have thought to be the salutary doctrines announced in In re Lunsford, 327 F.2d 526, 51 CCPA 1000; In re Ward, 329 F.2d 1021, 51 CCPA 1132; and In re Papesch, 315 F.2d 381, 50 CCPA 1084, that in chemical cases the issue of obviousness must be determined by a consideration of all of the properties of the claimed compound. I am unable to equate the holdings of these cases with the decision herein.
It seems to me that both the board and the majority predicate their opinions on findings of obviousness on a faulty appraisal of appellants’ entire invention to arrive at a result which is completely dependent on a hindsight reconstruction of the prior art. This same faulty half-analysis seems to me to lie at the base of the rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112. If we find appellants have made an unobvious invention it is because a full analysis of the invention compels it. The same type of analysis will, I think, show the error in the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112.
I would, therefore, reverse the decision of the board.