Hazeltine Research v. General Motors Corporation

170 F.2d 6, 79 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 201, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4158
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedOctober 19, 1948
Docket10597
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 170 F.2d 6 (Hazeltine Research v. General Motors Corporation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hazeltine Research v. General Motors Corporation, 170 F.2d 6, 79 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 201, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4158 (6th Cir. 1948).

Opinion

SIMONS, Circuit Judge.

As against the defense of invalidity based upon lack of invention, the appellant failed in its suit for infringement of two patents in the radio art. They are Wheeler No. 1,951,685, for a “Peak Detector,” issued March 20, 1934, and Wheeler No. 2,041,-273, issued May 19, 1936, for “Amplifier Volume Control.” The complaints alleging infringement were filed in 1941 by the Hazeltine Corporation but the appellant, as *8 present owner, was later substituted as plaintiff and the cases consolidated for trial.

Both patents in suit derive from an application filed by Wheeler on July 7, 1927 for a combination referred to in the record as the Washington Receiver. By divisional applications and re-issue, seven patents evolved from the parent application between September 27, 1932 and May 18, 1937. We are directly concerned only with the patents in suit, but indirectly with re-issue patent No. 19,744 granted October 29, 1935, which we adjudicated as valid and infringed in Detrola Radio and Television Corporation v. Hazeltine Corporation, 6 Cir., 117 F.2d 238, a decision which was reversed, however, by the Supreme Court of the United States under the same title in 313 U.S. 259, 61 S.Ct. 948, 85 L.Ed. 1319. The district judge, finding that the patents in suit were based upon the disclosure and described the same machine as was involved in the Detrola case, that its physical elements, their proportionings and operation were the same, that the advance over prior art was much less than was disclosed in the re-issue, concluded he was obliged to apply the standard of invention established by the Detrola case in the radio field, adjudged the patents in suit void for want of invention and dismissed the complaints.

Before giving consideration to the prior art in an effort to determine whether the findings below were, to such extent, supported by substantial evidence that they are not to be rejected as clearly erroneous, and whether, if sound, the court’s conclusion was compelled by the adjudication and reasoning of the Detrola case, we are obliged to give thought to a technical defense assailing the validity of the patents based upon the provisions of R.S. 4886, 35 U.S.C.A. § 31, in that the alleged inventions claimed in the patents in suit were described in a printed publication, were in public use and on sale in this country mor.e than two years prior to the applications upon which they issued. If this defense is valid it completely disposes of the controversy.

. The original application was filed July 7, 1927, the “Peak Detector” patent in suit was applied for April 1, 1931, and the “Amplifier Volume Control” patent in suit was applied for on August 27, 1932. In the interval between the date of the parent application and the dates of the divisional applications, and more than two years prior to the latter, Wheeler, if we accept his testimony as we think we must, stated that under his supervision a receiver embodying the inventions in suit was built by Stromberg-Carlson Company, a Hazeltine licensee, some time in August, 1926, and was thereupon demonstrated to the engineers of various Hazeltine licensees; that in the summer of 1927 the Howard Radio Company, with the appellant’s permission, constructed a receiver embodying the inventions in suit, built six of such receivers and sold a few at $3,000 apiece. In November or December of 1927 Wheeler delivered a paper, which was later printed, disclosing the inventions in suit with drawings therein included. The Stromberg-Carlson and Howard receivers were, however, merely embodiments of the circuits illustrated in the drawings of the parent application, and the drawings in Wheeler’s paper were likewise those of the application. The question, as we view it, then is, whether the StrombergCarlson and the Howard receivers and the Wheeler paper constitute such public use, sale and printed description as deprive Wheeler of his right to monopoly under the terms of §' 4886, or whether, -under applicable law, the parent application sufficiently discloses the inventions of the patents in suit to validate their grant, if otherwise patentable.

The rule is that “where an invention clearly disclosed in an application * * * is not claimed therein but is subsequently claimed in another application, the original will be deemed a constructive reduction of the invention to practice and the later one will be given the filing date of the earlier, with all its priority of right.” Chapman v. Wintroath, 252 U.S. 126, 40 S.Ct. 234, 236, 64 L.Ed. 491. No excuse need be shown for the delay in filing the divisional claims in the absence of intervening adverse rights. Crown Cork & Seal Co. v. Ferdinand Gutmann Co., 304 U.S. 159, 58 S.Ct. 842, 82 L.Ed. 1265; General Talking Pictures Co. v. Western Electric Co., 304 *9 U.S. 175, 182, 58 S.Ct. 849, 82 L.Ed. 1273. While this rule has been strongly criticised, as in the dissent of Mr. Justice Black in the last cited case, and in the article of Theodore A. Seegrist styled “Delay in Claiming,” 21 Patent Office Journal 741, 783, we must accept it as settled law, notwithstanding the criticism that failure to claim an invention, even though fully disclosed in an application, enables inventors to obtain the benefits of monopoly by means of such disclosure, and so extends the statutory period of patent protection. The rule is, of course, subject to the reservation that intervening rights will invalidate a later patent, even though disclosure is clear, and there has been no unreasonable delay in the claiming. There appears, however, to be no fixed rule as to what constitutes unreasonable delay, or whether intervening rights are limited to private adversary rights as distinguished from the rights of the public, as we found to be the case in Roos v. McMillan, 6 Cir., 64 F.2d 568. This uncertainty need not, however, presently detain us because there is here no reliance upon private intervening rights, the appellee basing its contention upon the failure of the parent application to disclose the inventions of the patents in suit, and upon public rights deriving from manufacture, sale and the Wheeler publication.

It becomes important, therefore, in determining whether the divisional applications upon which the patents in suit issued may base their priority upon the original application, to consider the requirements of law for full and complete disclosure of inventions and whether or not such disclosure may be perceived in the basic application. Section 4888 R.S., 35 U.S.C.A.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co. v. Union Carbide Corp.
250 F. Supp. 816 (N.D. Illinois, 1966)
Oelbaum v. Lovable Company
211 F. Supp. 594 (S.D. New York, 1962)
Coats Loaders & Stackers, Inc. v. Henderson
233 F.2d 915 (Sixth Circuit, 1956)
Rice v. General Motors Corp.
140 F. Supp. 247 (D. Massachusetts, 1956)
Ful-Vue Sales Co. v. American Optical Co.
112 F. Supp. 35 (S.D. New York, 1953)
Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co. v. Hughes Tool Co.
192 F.2d 620 (Tenth Circuit, 1951)
Wabash Corp. v. Ross Electric Corp.
187 F.2d 577 (Second Circuit, 1951)
Jacquard Knitting MacHine Co. v. Ordnance Gauge Co.
95 F. Supp. 902 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1951)
Youngs Rubber Corp. v. Allied Latex Corp.
94 F. Supp. 285 (S.D. New York, 1950)
Hazeltine Research, Inc. v. General Electric Co.
183 F.2d 3 (Seventh Circuit, 1950)
Harries v. Air King Products Co., Inc
183 F.2d 158 (Second Circuit, 1950)
Knight-Morley Corp. v. Ajax Mfg. Corp.
84 F. Supp. 215 (E.D. Michigan, 1948)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
170 F.2d 6, 79 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 201, 1948 U.S. App. LEXIS 4158, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hazeltine-research-v-general-motors-corporation-ca6-1948.