Court Opinion

ID: 9452717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:49:34.197308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:19.781091
License: Public Domain

KIRKPATRICK, Judge
(dissenting).
In Guyer v. Cramer, 318 F.2d 757, 50 CCPA 1386, this court stated, with respect to the question of support for interference counts, that “the minimum legal requirement is that support for count limitations be clear.” I think it far from clear that the Kamp reissue application supports the three limitations emphasized in the count as reproduced in the majority opinion.
The application does not disclose that the nut and bolt assemblies of the attaching means are tightened to provide fixed spaces between the washers before the wires of the coil spring construction are brought into their final position between the washers. There is thus no suggestion of a vibrator wherein each of the attaching means has a slot with a normally fixed opening space such as to permit attachment to the wires of a coil spring construction with the spring action required by the counts. Moreover, those features of the counts, which the record indicates were relied upon to obtain their allowance in the Houghtaling patent plainly are not inherent in the Kamp disclosure. See also McKee v. Noonan, 86 F.2d 986, 24 CCPA 784.
It seems to me that the majority has stretched the language of the counts and gratuitously attributed to Kamp the basic concept embodied in that language. Such treatment is not sound even as a means of protecting Kamp, as senior party, from losing protection for something he might have previously overlooked claiming. Under Rule 257 of the Patent Office, a senior party who loses an interference on the basis that he lacks support for particular recitations in a *977count is not thereby precluded from obtaining allowance of any broader claims which he can support and are otherwise patentable.
I would affirm the board’s decision.