99 F.2d 985 | D.C. Cir. | 1938
Appellant applied' to the Patent Office for patents on alleged improvements in the rotary valve of a water-softening apparatus. The Office allowed a claim for making a valve member of vulcanized hard rubber, hut rejected applicant’s other claims. He brought a bill in equity in the District Court, under 35 U.S.C.A. § 63, to require the allowance of the rejected claims. His bill was dismissed, and he appeals.
Structurally, appellant’s valve is substantially the same as the patent to Eisenhauer, No. 1,831,656. The rejected claims which require discussion arc for improvements in the material of the valve. These are-of two sorts: (1) those which describe a valve member as made of “a hard organic electrically non-conductive material providing a low coefficient of friction,” etc., or of “a material of the nature of vulcanized hard rubber,” and (2) those which describe a valve member as made of “laminated synthetic plastic.” We think the Patent Office and the lower court were right in rejecting these claims.
(1) The first type of claim is broader than the invention. It does not meet the requirement that the invention and the process of making or compounding it be described in “full, clear, concise, and exact terms.” 35 U.S.C.A. § 33. In Holland Furniture Company v. Perkins Glue Company, 277 U.S. 245, 256, 257, 48 S.Ct. 474, 479, 72 L.Ed. 868, the Supreme Court held that “an inventor may not describe a particular starch glue which will perform the function of animal glue and then claim all starch glues which have those functions. * * * A claim so broad, if allowed, would operate to enable the inventor who has discovered that a defined type of starch answers the required purpose to exclude others from all other types of starch, and so foreclose efforts to discover other and better types. The patent monopoly would thus be extended beyond the discovery, and would discourage rather than promote invention.” The principle applies here.
(2) The Browne patent 1,558,143 describes a ball valve, for use in pumps and similar apparatus, “composed of a plurality of layers or laminations of cotton duck or the like * * * impregnated with a phenol condensation product or other suitable adhesive substance.” Appellant’s claims (Nos. 3 and 10, Application 743,145) for a rotary valve describe its
Affirmed.