Court Opinion

ID: 9447015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:23:25.873883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:52.222612
License: Public Domain

KIRKPATRICK, District Judge,
dissenting, in which WORLEY, Chief Judge, joins.
I think that the board’s rejection of claims 1, 4, and 7 should be affirmed. The central idea and the most important feature of these three claims, as well as of allowed claim 5, is the exertion of outwardly directed pressure upon the bore engaging portion of the sealing member, the result accomplished being to counteract the tendency of rubber to “set” or lose its resiliency and so become ineffective to prevent leakage. Jepson comes very close to completely anticipating this feature of the patent. All that would be necessary to make the anticipation complete would be to provide the Jepson seal with a shaft engaging portion and, incidentally, claim 7 does not specify any shaft engaging portion.
Of course, it was necessary that the seal be attached to the bore in a manner to prevent its displacement. Chinnery provides a flange and screws for this purpose and none of the three claims referred to calls for anything more specific than “means.” Thus it seems clear that claims 1, 4, and 7 show no patentable novelty as against the prior art of Chin-nery plus Jepson.
The only question is whether Jepson is in a nonanalogous art sufficiently remote from that of the application to put it beyond the probability that it would be considered by persons skilled in the art endeavoring to solve the problem to the solution of which the application is directed. I do not think that it is. Jepson was trying to meet exactly the same problem as the application under consideration, namely, to provide a compressible *816seal which could be readily detached or inserted in a cylindrical bore but which would maintain a firm and leakproof seat on the bore when in place. I agree with the Solicitor’s argument that one seeking to improve a machinery seal would reasonably be expected to investigate not only machinery seals but seals in other arts where similar problems would be encountered. See In re O’Connor, 161 F.2d 221, 34 CCPA 1055.
Claim 10 stands on a somewhat different basis. This claim entirely omits what I think, and have stated above, to be the heart of the application. In substance, claim 10 really amounts to no more than a claim for a hook formation to interlock with the housing of a bore in order to hold a press fit seal in place.1 Chinnery discloses means to serve the same purpose consisting of screws.
The board conceded that the combination disclosed in claim 10, consisting of spring hooks to fasten a press fit seal to the bore, disclosed novelty over Chinnery but not patentable novelty.
I do not read the opinion of the board as predicating its conclusion of want of invention on the theory that in order to be patentable a combination must have some distinct advantage over the prior art. The board stated that there was nothing in the record to show that the substitution of hooks for screws produced any unexpected result or advantage and, therefore, concluded that the introduction of hooks did not create patentable novelty, but was a mere substitution of equivalents. The statement that the spring hooks of Ratti were no better than the screws of Chinnery was directed toward this point and seemingly was added to fortify the board’s finding of equivalency rather than to propound a theory of patentability. I agree with the board that this claim, though it may show novelty over Chinnery, does not show patentable novelty, and I would affirm its rejection.

. Chinnery discloses a press fit seal, but no one has suggested that there is anything new about such a device and the specification of the application before us concedes that it is old in the art.