Application of Shuman
| Decision Date | 16 June 1966 |
| Docket Number | Patent Appeal No. 7616. |
| Citation | 361 F.2d 1008,150 USPQ 54 |
| Parties | Application of Robert Cowan SHUMAN and Francis John Meinhardt. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) |
George H. Montemayor, Howard M. Herriott, Janesville, Wis., for appellants.
Joseph Schimmel, Washington, D. C. (Jere W. Sears, Washington, D. C., of counsel), for the Commissioner of Patents.
Before RICH, Acting Chief Judge, and MARTIN, SMITH and ALMOND, Judges, and Judge WILLIAM H. KIRKPATRICK.*
The issue here is whether the invention defined by the appealed claims,1 relating to a writing tip for a ball point pen and a method of making same, is obvious within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103. The appealed claims were considered together by the parties and we shall do likewise.
The references relied on by the examiner are as follows:
Bolvin
(French) 1,009,193 Mar. 5, 1952
Schwartz et al
(Schwartz) 2,630,383 Mar. 3, 1953
The examiner concluded that the claimed subject matter was obvious based on Bolvin in view of Schwartz.
The disagreement of the parties concerns the teachings of the prior art relating to the composition of the writing tip. We will first examine the teachings of the prior art. Bolvin also discloses a ball point writing instrument. The teachings of Bolvin relied on by the examiner and the board relate to the construction of the writing tip which is spherical in shape and "slightly corrugated." The "corrugations" in the ball resemble grooves in the polished surface of the ball, and result from "rolling the balls in all directions between two plates * * * covered with powdered diamond or other abrasives." The grooves serve to transfer the ink from the ink reservoir to the writing paper as the ball rotates during writing.
The writing tip is a "spherical, surface-hardened steel ball, not too highly polished." Also, good results are obtained with "balls made of gems, especially of agates."
The specific teaching of Bolvin, concerning alternate ball compositions relied on by the Patent Office, appears at 2 below in Bolvin:
The Schwartz reference relates to "a tool made from cemented carbide which has been previously sintered and crushed into granules, which * * * is useful for such purposes as drilling dental enamel, glass, masonry, ceramics and metal, and for grinding similar materials." Schwartz discloses several tools including a "dental burr" wherein the finished burr is in the form of a sphere mounted on a shank. The spherical burr is composed of "sharp, irregular cemented carbide granules" which have been "screened to a size ranging between about 20 mesh to about 325 mesh." The granules are "then placed in a mold and compacted by vibration or by the application of pressure." Schwartz states:
* * * The compact density that is obtained by either of these methods of compacting is limited to a minimum of approximately 40% voids due to the fact that the hard irregular granules tend to lock together in such a manner as to substantially preclude further compaction. The compacted granules are subsequently resintered by heating * * * and during the resintering no pressure is applied to the compact.3
Schwartz describes the resulting product as follows:
* * * It will be appreciated that when the sintered carbide is ground to a fine powder that the particles lose the characteristics of a sintered cemented carbide material. This is not true however of the granules which are selected to form the tool which is the subject matter of our invention. The selected granules * * * bond together at their points of contact only and retain their identity as discrete hard imporous granules of cemented carbide and have substantially the same size that they had prior to resintering. The resulting product is a porous tool comprised of irregularly shaped imporous hard selected carbide granules which are bonded together at their points of contact only and which has a minmum porosity of approximately 25% and a maximum porosity of approximately 60%.4
The examiner's reasoning, adopted by the board and cited approvingly by the solicitor, was as follows:
The Bolvin ball * * * in one of its modes of manufacture, may be formed by an agglomerate of very fine powder compressed under very high pressure so as to provide, on the spherical surface of the ball, a very fine mosaic, very hard but porous * *. It would be obvious to apply to the sintering art for the choice of such very hard material and to select the material disclosed in Schwartz et al; namely, a plurality of obviously randomly distributed carbide particles sintered together to form a cemented carbide compact * * *.
The solicitor in his brief adds:
* * * Schwartz et al. shows a very rough surface indeed * * *. Obviously, some surface grinding is called for here. One skilled in the art must be presumed to know how the required grinding could be performed, inasmuch as appellants disclose no specific grinding step for their own sintered carbide ball. Thus, it is evident that appellants\' invention was essentially obvious.
Appellants state in their specification that their writing ball is:
* * * an integral structure composed of tungsten or titanium carbide, the binder metal itself, and intermediates of the carbide and the binder metal. * * *
The surface of the ball consists of "lands" and "pits" as:
In order to minimize seat wear and to provide satisfactory writeability of the ball over slick or greasy surfaces, the specification states:
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Ritter v. Rohm & Haas Company
...27-39. 55 Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co., 339 U.S. 605, 608, 70 S.Ct. 854, 94 L.Ed. 1097 (1950). 56 Application of Shuman, 361 F.2d 1008 (C.C.P.A.1966); Application of Foster, 343 F.2d 980 57 DX I, Tab 8, p. 1, fourth paragraph; p. 2, second paragraph. 58 DX I, Tab 8, pp. ......
-
Panduit Corp. v. Dennison Mfg. Co.
...art only those which may be modified and then utilized to reconstruct appellants' invention from such prior art. In re Shuman, 361 F.2d 1008, 1012, 150 USPQ 54, 57 (CCPA 1966). In Stratoflex, Inc. v. Aeroquip Corp., 713 F.2d 1530, 1538, 218 USPQ 871, 879 (Fed.Cir.1983), this court noted the......
-
Interconnect Planning Corp. v. Feil
...system as a whole, that constitutes the flaw in the application of section 103 to the Feil claims. As stated in In re Shuman, 361 F.2d 1008, 1012, 150 USPQ 54, 57 (CCPA 1966): It is impermissible to first ascertain factually what appellants did and then view the prior art in such a manner a......
-
Vandenberg v. Dairy Equipment Co., a Div. of Dec Intern., Inc.
...405 F.2d 578, 585, 160 USPQ 237, 243 (CCPA 1969), and must analyze and consider the references as a whole, In re Shuman, 361 F.2d 1008, 1012, 150 USPQ 54, 57 (CCPA 1966). Furthermore, once a patent has been issued, it is presumed valid, and the burden of persuasion on the issue of obviousne......