Jungersen v. Ostby & Barton Company/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

335 U.S. 560

Jungersen  v.  Ostby & Barton Company

 Argued: Nov. 10, 1948. --- Decided: Jan 3, 1949

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, with whom Mr. Justice BURTON joins, dissenting.

This is not one of those patent controversies that carry serious consequences for an important industry and thereby for the general public. The case does, however, raise basic issues regarding the judiciary's role in our existing patent system. These issues were stated by Judge Learned Hand when the litigation was before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Since this Court's opinion has not, to my mind, met the questions which he raised, and since I cannot improve upon what Judge Learned Hand wrote, I adopt his opinion as mine.

'In Jungersen's British patent, as my brothers truly say, he based his invention solely upon forcing the wax and the metal into completely intimate contact with every crevice of the mould, and for this he disclosed a centrifuge as the means. Moreover, it had already been known by other moulders of fine patterns that the metal might not fill all the spaces necessary for perfect reproduction. For example, in 1873 Haseltine disclosed a device which set up a pressure of twenty pounds to the square inch; and this too in a 'lost wax' process. True, he did not disclose using similar pressure for the wax, and he did not use a centrifuge; but McManus used a centrifuge to force fusible metal into all the crevices of the mould, and that too in a 'lost wax' process, the knowledge of which he appears to have assumed, for he does not disclose how to make the wax model. Kralund also showed a pressure die-casting process, as applied to the 'lost wax' method; and he used pressure to force his wax into intimate co nection with the first die as well as upon the molten metal of the final casting: but his original die was of steel and he does not describe its manufacture.

'Nevertheless, in spite of all these approaches, and of the fact that all the elements of the disclosure were to be found in the prior art, it remains true that Jungersen's process in its entirety had never been assembled before; no one had ever thought of combining all those steps in a single sequence. True, had the combination not been new in this objective sense, it could not have been patented merely by turning it to a new use; and that would have been so, although it might have taken as much originality to see that it could be put to the new use, as it takes to make an outstanding invention. It would have been a final answer that Congress has never seen fit to extend its constitutional power to 'discoveries' as such, and has limited patents to an 'art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter,' ^[1] as we have often said-the last time in Old Town Ribbon & Carbon Co., Inc., v. Columbia Ribbon & Carbon Manufacturing Co. ^[2] My point is that, if there is a new combination, however trifling the physical change may be, nothing more is required than that, to take the step or steps, added 'invention,' is needed; and 'invention,' whatever else it may be, is within the category of mental activities and of those alone. In the case at bar the answer must therefore depend upon how we shall appraise the departure from what had gone before in terms of creative imagination; indeed, I do not understand what other test could be relevant.

'If that be the test, I submit that Jungersen's process meets it. From time immemorial jewelry had been manufactured by the earlier processes; so that the need, if need there was, had existed for years. Moreover, two of those earlier processes 'cuttlefish casting and sand-casting'-have now become 'of little commercial significance'; 'die-stamping' and Jungersen's process 'are the only substantial methods now commercially used'; and in the manufacture of a hundred rings or less 'die-stamping' is more expensive. Had some technological advance held up the change, and had Jungersen made it only a short time after the obstacle had been removed, I should agree that the inference of outstanding originality would have been greatly weakened; but that was not the fact. Indeed, it is the very basis of the defence that for years all the elements lay open and available, and that nothing was needed but the paltry modification which has proved so fruitful. To that I make the answer on which courts in the past used to ring the changes with wearisome iteration. If all the information was at hand, why was the new combination so long delayed? What better test of invention can one ask than the detection of that which others had all along had a strong incentive to discover, but had failed to see, though all the while it lay beneath their eyes? True, the whole approach to the subject has suffered a shift within the last decade or so, which I recognize that we should accept as authoritative. Moreover, I am not aware of the slightest bias in favor of the present system; I should accept with equanimity a new system or no system. However, I confess myself baffled to know how to proceed, if we are at once to profess to apply the system as it is, and yet in every concrete instance we are to decide as though it did not exist as it is. In the cast at bar, I can only say that, so far as I have been able to comprehend those factors which have been held to determine invention, and to which at least lip service continues to be paid, the combination in suit has every hall-mark of a valid patent.'

Judge Hand's opinion is reported 166 F.2d at page 811.

Notes

1. § 31, Title 35 U.S.C.A.
2. 2 Cir., 159 F.2d 379, 382.