Morgan v. Drake

36 F.2d 511, 17 C.C.P.A. 729
CourtCourt of Customs and Patent Appeals
DecidedDecember 30, 1929
DocketPatent Appeal 2181
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 36 F.2d 511 (Morgan v. Drake) 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
Morgan v. Drake, 36 F.2d 511, 17 C.C.P.A. 729 (ccpa 1929).

Opinion

GARRETT, Associate Judge.

This is a three-party interference proceeding involving alleged “useful improvements in grinding machines,” being machines particularly for the grinding of internal surfaces.

On February 3,-1921, appellant filed an application in the Patent Office seeking a patent, which was granted April 28, 1925, being No. 1,535,331, and on January 20-, 1926, he filed an application for a reissue of No. 1,535,331, presenting therein claims corresponding to certain claims in a patent issued to one Prentice Conradson on April 21, 1925, being patent No. 1,534,301, and prayed that an interference be declared between said Conradson patent and his (Morgan’s) reissue application. At the time of the filing of this Morgan reissue application, the Conrad-son patent was already involved in an interference proceeding with a pending application of Conradson’s coappellees, Alden M. Drake and Roy D. Hubbell, serial No. 528,-118, filed January 9, 1922. On March 8, 1926, following thé filing of Morgan’s reissue application, the interference No. 53,010 was reformed, and Morgan was added as a third party.

November 2, 1926, the Law Examiner rendered a decision dismissing the motions of Drake & Hubbell and Conradson to dissolve the interference, and on December 1, 1926, the Commissioner denied a petition by them to exercise his supervisory authority. No testimony was taken in the ease, and on January 29, 1927, the Examiner of Interferences rendered his final decision awarding priority of invention to Myles Morgan, the senior party, and appellant herein. The junior parties thereupon appealed to the Board of Appeals, who, on December 12, 1927, rendered a decision reversing the Examiner of Interferences and denying priority of invention to Morgan. The matter thus comes before us upon appeal from the decision of the Board of Appeals.

The counts of interference as set forth in the official declaration are as follows:

“Count 1. A grinding machine having, in combination, a carriage having an idle position and a position in which it reciprocates, a piston and cylinder unit for moving said carriage, a control valve connected to a source of pressure fluid and to said piston and cylinder unit, a valve operating device, means on said carriage for moving said device when the carriage is in its reciprocating position to automatically reverse said valve and effect reciprocation of said carriage, and means on the carriage for operating said device when the carriage is at its idle position *512 to move said valve to its natural or inactive position and thereby stop reciprocation of said carriage.

“Count 2. A grinding machine having, in combination, a slidably mounted carriage, pressure fluid means for reciprocating said carriage including a control valve, a lever for operating said valve, and a stop on said carriage arranged to engage said lever and move said valve to neutral position to discontinue the movement of said carriage.

“Count 3. A grinding machine having, in combination, a reeiproeatory carriage having an idle position and an operative position, pressure fluid means for moving said carriage including a control valve, an operating device for said valve, means on said carriage to actuate said operating device when the carriage approaches its idle position to move the valve to neutral position, and separate means on said carriage which automatically comes into operative relation to said operating device in the movement of said carriage from idle to operative position for automatically reciprocating said operating device to reverse said control valve and thereby effect continuous reciprocation of said carriage in its operative position.

“Count 4. A machine of the eharaeter described having, in combination, a carriage having an operative position and an idle position remote from said operative position, and mechanism arranged to reciprocate the carriage in its operative position, to return the carriage to its idle position and to automatically stop the carriage at its idle position.”

It was the opinion of the Board of Appeals of the Patent Office that the original Myles Morgan patent failed to disclose the sub j ect-matter of his reissue claims, and that he therefore, had no right to make said claims, and in so holding the Board reversed the finding of the Law Examiner upon that question. It is essential that we pass upon this in determining the issue of priority. If Morgan had no right to make the claims in his reissue application, because their features were not properly disclosed, as required in the administration of the patent laws, in the patent upon which the reissue was filed, then he cannot be given priority. Obviously it is not necessary in interference cases to consider dates of conception and reduction to practice until it has been definitely determined that the thing conceived and reduced to practice is so similar in structure to the thing which it is sought to have declared an interference as that both conceptions read upon, the count.

Section 4916 of the Revised Statutes, as amended by Act May 24, 1928 (USCA, tit. 35, § 64), provides: “Whenever any patent is wholly or partly inoperative or invalid, by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, * * * if the error has arisen by inadvertence, accident, or mistake, and without any fraudulent or deceptive intention, the commissioner shall, * * * cause a patent for the same invention, and in accordance with the corrected specification, to be reissued * * * but no new matter shall be introduced into the specification, nor in ease of a machine patent shall the model or drawings be amended, except each by the other.”

The words “the same invention,” used in the statute, supra, received a construction by the Supreme Court of the United -States in the ease of Parker & Whipple Co. v. Yale Clock Co., 123 U. S. 100, 8 S. Ct. 38, 31 L. Ed. 100, which has since been uniformly followed. Walker on Patents (5th Ed.) p. 299, § 233, discussing this decision, says that it established the meaning of the phrase “the same invention” to be: “Whatever invention was described in the original letters patent, and appears therein to have been intended to be secured thereby. * * * Therefore, no reissue claim can stand any longer upon a model alone, nor even alone upon a drawing of an original patent, and indeed, neither models, drawing nor descriptions, nor all of them together, can support a reissue claim except where the description in the original letters patent shows that the invention covered by that claim was intended to be secured in the original.”

The issue in this case has been rendered somewhat complex by the fact that, in the patent specifications of Myles Morgan, No. 1,535,331, reference was made to certain pri- or patent applications of his father, Ralph L. Morgan, and with his reissue application Myles Morgan filed several drawings which did not appear with those of his original upon which patent No. 1,535,331 was granted, but are substantially reproductions of drawings in the Ralph Morgan application. The original Myles Morgan patent shows one sheet of drawings containing four figures; his reissue application shows four sheets containing eleven figures. These seven extra figures are taken from the Ralph L. Morgan application. The specifications in the reissue application have likewise been added to by the inclusion of matter explanatory, of these seven figures, which added specification matter covers eight pages of the record.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
36 F.2d 511, 17 C.C.P.A. 729, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/morgan-v-drake-ccpa-1929.