Application of William G. Baird, Jr., Carl A. Lindstrom, Jr., Arthur L. Besse, Jr., and Donald J. D'EntrEmont

348 F.2d 974, 52 C.C.P.A. 1747
CourtCourt of Customs and Patent Appeals
DecidedAugust 20, 1965
DocketPatent Appeal 7445
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 348 F.2d 974 (Application of William G. Baird, Jr., Carl A. Lindstrom, Jr., Arthur L. Besse, Jr., and Donald J. D'EntrEmont) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Customs and Patent Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Application of William G. Baird, Jr., Carl A. Lindstrom, Jr., Arthur L. Besse, Jr., and Donald J. D'EntrEmont, 348 F.2d 974, 52 C.C.P.A. 1747 (ccpa 1965).

Opinion

RICH, Judge.

This appeal is from the decision of the Board of Appeals of the Patent Office in application serial No. 817,246, filed June 1, 1959, by Baird, Jr., Lindstrom, Jr., Besse, Jr., and D’Entremont for “Method of Treating Polypropylene.”

The application at bar is stated to be a continuation-in-part of application serial No. 713,848, filed February 7,1958, by the same four inventors for “Method of Producing Film Having Improved Shrink Energy,” now patent No. 3,022,-543, herein “Baird et al.,” issued to W. R. Grace & Co., assignee, on February 27, 1962.

*976 The Issues

This appeal presents three distinct issues: (1) double patenting in view of certain claims of Baird et al.; (2) the patentability of two claims over the following references:

Gerber 2,862,234 Dec. 2,1958

Diedrich et al. 2,961,711 Nov. 29, 1960;

and (3) sufficiency of appellants’ disclosure to support a group of claims copied, or substantially copied (under the practice authorized by Ex parte Card and Card, 1904 C.D. 383 (Com’r.); see MPEP 1101.02), from

Munt 3,059,991 Oct. 23,1962.

Involved in the double patenting issue are claims 2, 3, 6-11, 13, 14, and 15. On the second issue only claims 32 and 33 are involved. On the third issue the abbreviated record and the briefs leave the situation in some confusion. Apparently, guessing from what the record shows, appellants inserted a group of copied or substantially copied claims numbered 16-33. The examiner’s final rejection rejects claims “16-23” as “lacking basis in the disclosure.” It also refers specifically, in the discussion, to claims 17, 18, 19, 25, and 27, and then to claims 23-33. It would appear that the examiner intended to reject claims 16-33 as in his answer, following appeal to the board, he said the appeal involved the right to make claims “16-33.” The board, in its opinion, made it clear beyond question that it was dealing with and affirming a rejection of claims 16-33 on the ground of lack of support.

The situation involves the further complication that the board made a new ground of rejection under Rule 196(b), ground (1) supra, the applicants then went back to the examiner under that rule, and took a second appeal to the board from his action. The board rendered a second decision but, before it did so, an appeal on claims 16-21 and 24 and raising only the sufficiency of disclosure issue had been taken to this court on December 30, 1963. After the second decision of the board on other claims a second appeal was .taken to this court on February 26, 1964. The latter appeal was stated in the notice of appeal to be an appeal on claims 2, 3, 6-11, 13-15, 32 and 33. At that time claims 32 and 33, as part of the claim group 16-33, were under rejection on all of the grounds (1), (2), and (3) above enumerated. The first appeal to this court makes no mention whatever of claims 32 and 33. The second appeal, while taken on these claims, along with eleven others, is very specific in pointing out the alleged errors of the board and includes, in the seven reasons of appeal (numbered 11 through 16 in supplementation of reasons 1 through 9 of the first appeal), only matters relating to the prior art rejection, (2) above, and the double patenting rejection, (1) above. There is no reason of appeal which, by the most liberal construction, indicates in any way, even generally, that the board erred in affirming the rejection of claims 32 and 33 for lack of support in appellants’ specification, (3) above. It is therefore clear that appellants have not brought that ground of rejection before us by any reason of appeal. In addition, appellants have not argued this rejection in their brief insofar as claims 32 and 33 are concerned. That this is so is very clear from the facts that in reciting the “questions presented” those two claims are not included among those rejected for lack of support and in the “summary” they are not included among the claims as to which we are asked to reverse the lack of support rejection. Appellants argue the other two rejections of claims 32 and 33 but appear to have overlooked the fact they were rejected on the ground of lack of support.

When an examiner’s ground of rejection, affirmed by the board, is not argued by the appellant, even if raised by an adequate reason of appeal, this court has uniformly pursued the policy of treating the issue as abandoned. In re Krasnow, 166 F.2d 196, 35 CCPA 939. See also In re Gruschwitz, 320 F.2d 401, 50 CCPA *977 1498, and cases cited in the appendix thereto. For this reason the rejection of claims 32 and 33 would have to be affirmed, one uncontested ground of rejection being sufficient to support such a holding. Anticlimactically, we will add that at the oral argument appellants’ counsel advised that he was withdrawing claim 32 from the appeal.

We also add that the Patent Office brief argues throughout for affirmance of the rejection of claims “16-33” notwithstanding that, aside from the above facts respecting claims 32 and 33, appellants never gave notice of appeal from the rejection of claims 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, or 31 nor mentioned any of them in their brief which was served on the Patent Office. Lack of attention on the part of both parties to these annoying mechanical details of legal procedure has made much work for the court which should not have been necessary and should have been done by counsel long ago.

The foregoing disposition of claims 32 and 33 makes it unnecessary to consider issue (2), supra, or the two prior art patents involved in it. Left for consideration are the double patenting and lack of support issues which require an understanding of the invention.

The Invention

All claims are directed to a method or process of stretch orienting polypropylene. Material so made has various uses such as films for the wrapping of foods and other materials, shrinking bags, bottle caps, and boiling water-resistant containers, such as baby bottles. The stretch-oriented articles of the invention are said to have high shrink energy at temperatures above 145° C. with a percent shrink of from 20 to 60% but to have a low shrink percentage at 100° C. In illustrative use given in the parent patent is a bag made from tubing, placed around a turkey and shrunk around it by heating to form a packaged product. A general outline of the process as described in the parent patent is that polyethylene is heated and extruded into tubular form following which these four steps take place: (1) cooling to a low enough temperature to permit handling, which may be about room temperature, (2) irradiating at a dosage of at least 2 x 10® REP, (3) reheating the irradiated material enough so it will stretch without breaking and bilaterally stretching it by inflating it into a bubble, and (4) cooling in the stretched condition to a form-retaining temperature. Such material, when sufficiently reheated, shrinks as above indicated. The parent case, after describing the processing of polyethylene, says, “there can also be used in the process of the invention solid polypropylene” and certain other named polymeric materials not important here.

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348 F.2d 974, 52 C.C.P.A. 1747, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/application-of-william-g-baird-jr-carl-a-lindstrom-jr-arthur-l-ccpa-1965.