Irons v. Diamond, s. 80-2015
| Decision Date | 18 December 1981 |
| Docket Number | 81-2159,Nos. 80-2015,s. 80-2015 |
| Citation | 214 USPQ 81,670 F.2d 265 |
| Parties | , 214 U.S.P.Q. 81 Edward S. IRONS, Appellant, v. Sidney A. DIAMOND, Commissioner of Patents. Edward S. IRONS, Appellant, v. Sidney A. DIAMOND, Commissioner of Patents. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. Civil Action No. 70-00075).
R. Craig Lawrence, Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., with whom Charles F. C. Ruff, U. S. Atty., Royce C. Lamberth and Kenneth M. Raisler, Asst. U. S. Attys., and Joseph S. Nakamura, Sol., U. S. Office of Patents and Trademarks, Washington, D. C., were on the brief for appellee.
Before MacKINNON, MIKVA and GINSBURG, Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge MacKINNON.
This is "Round IV" of appellant's ten-year fight to secure access under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the unpublished manuscript decisions of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). 1 In the order presently under review, the district court ordered the PTO to produce, from approximately 175 bound volumes of decisions covering the years 1853-1954, all unpublished manuscript decisions relating to granted patent applications upon the prepayment of a reasonable search fee of an undetermined amount. The district court also dismissed the remainder of appellant's second amended complaint. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for further proceedings.
Appellant argues initially that the district court disregarded this court's mandate in Irons v. Gottschalk (Irons II ) 2 when it ordered the PTO to produce from the 175 bound volumes only those unpublished decisions relating to granted patent applications. Appellant contends that Irons II also entitles him, after the "detailed information and salient knowledge pertaining to the patent applications" has been deleted therefrom, to the unpublished decisions relating to pending or abandoned patent applications. 3 Although appellant recognizes that Irons & Sears v. Dann 4 holds that decisions relating to pending or abandoned patent applications are exempt in their entirety, he asserts that the district court's reliance upon Dann was foreclosed by the doctrine of the law of the case.
We agree that Irons II and Dann are irreconcilable in this respect. Both decisions addressed the interrelationship of 35 U.S.C. § 122 and exemption three of FOIA. 5 Section 122 provides: 6
Applications for patents shall be kept in confidence by the Patent and Trademark Office and no information concerning the same given without authority of the applicant or owner unless necessary to carry out the provisions of any Act of Congress or in such special circumstances as may be determined by the Commissioner.
Irons II concluded that the "information concerning" clause of section 122 did not exempt pending and abandoned application decisions in their entirety, but only the "detailed information and salient knowledge pertaining to the patent applications" contained in those decisions. 7 Dann found the pending and abandoned application decisions exempt in their entirety, 8 specifically rejecting the contention that the decisions could be made available after deletion of certain matter considered to be excisable
Congress seems to have intended to draw a bright line shielding from disclosure all information concerning patent applications. Had it wanted to insulate only some information concerning them, or otherwise to inaugurate a regime of selective excision, it could easily have so specified. Instead, it enacted a flat prohibition on disclosure which we do not feel free to ignore. Accordingly, we conclude that the documents in suit are exempt in toto insofar as they relate to pending or abandoned patent applications. 9
Having acknowledged this fundamental inconsistency between Irons II and Dann, 10 we decline to resolve it through application of the law of the case doctrine. While this path would lead us out of the present thicket, it would do little if anything to cut away the tangled legal underbrush and clarify the controlling law in this circuit. Upon further reflection, we find persuasive the reasoning in Dann that 35 U.S.C. § 122 unambiguously provides that applications for patents shall be kept in confidence by the PTO, and that no information concerning the same shall be disclosed. This brings such information within Exemption 3. Accordingly, we reject Irons II to the extent it holds or intimates to the contrary. 11 Because the district court correctly applied Dann to the circumstances of this case, we affirm its order in this respect.
As noted above, the district court ordered the PTO to produce the granted application decisions contained in the 175 bound volumes only upon prepayment of a reasonable search fee of an undetermined amount. Appellant vigorously argues that the district court erred in so doing. He points out that he seeks only "final opinions ... made in the adjudication of cases" within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(2)(A), 12 opinions which section 552(a)(2)(A) requires the PTO to "make available for public inspection and copying". Appellant asserts that since section 552(a)(2)(A) requires the PTO to make such opinions available to the public, the PTO may not condition its compliance with the mandate of the statute upon a member of the public reimbursing the PTO for its costs of doing so.
We are presently unable to address this argument. First, we have some difficulty with the suggestion that Congress intended section 552(a)(2)(A), enacted in 1967, to apply to final opinions which were rendered as long ago as 1853, more than one hundred years before the statute was passed. To so hold would be to conclude that Congress intended to require every federal agency to determine which of its decisions handed down during the decades preceding 1967 constituted a "final opinion" and to make those that did available to the public. We hesitate to impose such a herculean task upon the federal bureaucracy in the absence of a clear manifestation of congressional intent. 13 However, since this issue was not addressed by either the parties or the district court, we think it inappropriate to resolve it ourselves in the first instance. Second, the district court did not address the question of which manuscript decisions constitute "final opinions" for purposes of § 552(a)(2) (A). 14 We repeat our earlier direction in Irons II 15 that the district court rule on this issue and offer again the suggestion that a special master might be used for this purpose if the task proves too time-consuming. We continue to lack a sufficiently detailed and focused record to make such a determination and consider it essential for the district court to determine the nature and content of the PTO's manuscript decisions as promptly as possible. We accordingly reverse the district court's order to the extent it requires prepayment of a search fee at this time, and remand the case for resolution of the following issues:
1) Does section 552(a)(2)(A) require the PTO to "make available for public inspection and copying those "final opinions ... made in the adjudication of cases" which were decided before the enactment of FOIA on July 4, 1967?
2) If issue 1 is answered in the affirmative, which decisions qualify?
3) If issue 1 is answered in the affirmative, does 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A) authorize an agency to charge a search fee to cover the costs of making those final opinions available to the public?
4) If a search fee is authorized should the fee be waived or reduced in the public interest because furnishing the documents can be considered as primarily benefiting the general public under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)?
We view issue (3) as a matter that is not entirely free from doubt. There is appeal to the argument that when Congress ordered agencies to make their final opinions available to the public, it did not envision that the agencies would pass along the costs of doing so to an individual member of the public. In addition, the legislative history of section 552(a)(4)(A) appears to limit its reach to records disclosed under section 552(a)(3), that is, to matters which members of the public can obtain only on request and which have not already been published in the Federal Register under section 552(a)(1) or made available to the public under sections 552(a)(1) and (a)(2). See H.R.Rep.No.1380, supra n.16; S.Rep.No.854, supra n.16.
The language of section 552(a)(4)(A), however, can be read in a contrary fashion. 16 If the district court answering issue (1) rules against retroactivity, payment of a search fee would clearly be in order. Appellant would then not be seeking "final opinions ... made in the adjudication of cases" within the meaning of section 552(a)(2)(A), but rather would be requesting agency "records" under section 552(a)(3). A search fee for such records, as appellant does not contest, is clearly authorized by 5 U.S.C. § 554(a)(4)(A). The fees authorized thereby are intended "to carry out the provisions of this section" and the term "section" would appear to refer to section 552 as a whole, which would include section 552(a)(2)(A). Furthermore, section 552(a)(4)(A) authorizes the charging of a fee for "documents," a term which is undefined by the Act but which would appear broad enough to encompass both "records" and "final opinions", particularly those of ancient vintage. K. Davis, Administrative Law, § 5:4 at 315, § 5:20 at 368 (1978). We intimate no view on the outcome of this question, however, but leave it for determination by the district court.
We note an additional argument raised by the government. The government contends that even if a search fee may normally not be charged for making final opinions available to the public, a search fee may be...
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