(after stat-stating the facts as above). The design patent appears to us to be not a design patent • at all. We recognize that in «esthetics there are no standards, and that) the design need not please such'sensibilities as we may personally chance to possess. Nevertheless, we must find that the disclosure has at least a rudimentary «esthetic appeal, for so we interpret the word, “ornamental.” This we have more than once said. Rowe v. Blodgett,
On the other hand, a majority of us think the mechanical patent valid. The nearest approach is Spring’s tricycle, for we cannot take seriously enough for discussion the mechanical toy of a eentury and a quarter ago. It would indeed have taken very little to change Spring’s disclosure into the patent in suit. Yet, as it stood, it was wholly unsuited for little children. It had no fiat broad seat— no broad seat at all, in fact. Such seat as it had, if by that one means, as White did, the whole part connecting the rear wheels with the front one, was not horizontal. It required a thorough reconstruction to be made into White’s disclosure. We at once agree that, given the suggestion of making it into a safe tricycle for very small children to paddle
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about upon, tbo necessary adjustments were simple. In that respect the situation is a common one. Again and again, ad nauseam, courts have been fond of saying that it is the obvious when discovered and put to use that most often proves invention. In such matters we look rather to history than to our own powers of divination, if history is at hand. Kirsch v. Gould,
Infringement of claim 2 being too plain for discussion, especially in the case of so successful an invention, we pass to a point of law which we must agree is not free from doubt. Had the design patent been valid along with the mechanical we should have been considerably embarrassed to avoid the defense of double patenting, for the attempted distinctions between the two disclosures appear to us trivial. A design patent may anticipate a meehanieal, Lein v. Myers,
Judge Archbald did indeed say in Williams Calk Co. v. Neverslip Mfg. Co. (C. C.)
A patent is a bargain between the sovereign and the inventor in which the consideration moving to the inventor is the grant. Whatever may be the result if throughout the granted term the inventor has had the enjoyment of his apparent monopoly, it seems to us that, when his patent is declared invalid before its expiry, the consideration fails and the counter consideration moving from the inventor — i. e., the dedication of the disclosure— may be revoked. There being no chance for apportionment of the dedication, it ought not therefore to be held that a subsequent and valid patent is itself invalidated because of the original dedication. The whole vice of double patenting arises from the fact that the second patent defeats the dedication made in the first by extending the term of tho original monopoly. Anything, therefore, which relieves the inventor of the first dedication, sets him free again to dedicate the disclosure, if not otherwise abandoned, and leaves it as a valid consideration for the second grant. Since the design patent had not expired at the time of the decree declaring it void, the inventor had not enjoyed his entire consideration, and the second grant was adequately supported by the disclosure.
Decree affirmed as to the design patent; decree reversed as to the mechanical patent and canse remanded with directions to grant an injunction upon claim 2. No costs.
