In 1945, Sinclair and Carrol vs. Interchemical Corporation was a US Supreme Court case that involved obviousness. In this case, Interchemical Corporation sued Sinclair and Carrol for infringing upon patents for inks. The patent specifically belonged to Albert Gessler, who was a member of Interchemical Corporation. Basically this patent involved inks that had the ability to dry when heat was applied, but did not readily dry in room temperatures. At the time, this was considered a very valuable patent due to the fact that the ink could be utilized on different types of papers.
When taken to the Supreme Court, the court claimed that the said patent was not valid because "subject matter must display invention, more ingenuity than the work of a mechanic skilled in the art." Although this is rather insulting to an inventor who likely spent much time on this invention, the court was clear that the patent was "not the product of long and difficult experimentation and that reading a list and selecting a known compound to meet known requirements is not more ingenious than selecting the last piece to put into the last opening in a jig-saw puzzle."
What I found particularly interesting in this case was that it stated that many had previously tried to make an ink with the specifications of that made by Gessler. This likely means that the court heavily exaggerated the analogy to a jig-saw puzzle, and used too much hindsight bias. With the knowledge I have about this case, I likely would have been in favor of keeping the patent as valid, due to the fact that clearly there was a market pressure for such an ink. The case went through three levels of courts, with the District Court invalidating the patent, the Circuit Court validating the patent, and finally the Supreme Court invalidating the patent again.
A portion of claim 3 in the patent is shown below:
"A printing ink which is substantially non-drying at ordinary temperatures and dries instantly on heating of the printed matter, consisting of coloring matter dispersed in an organic viscous vehicle consisting of a liquid component and a solid component..."
(Information obtained from http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/325/327/)
It's extremely interesting to me how a court can rule that an invention is obvious when no one has come up with the invention before, especially when people have tried and failed. The fact that there have been others who attempted to create the same technology but were unable to do so illustrates that there is something non-obvious to this technology.
ReplyDeleteAkshay, you bring up a good point on what the courts consider obvious and non-obvious. Why do you think the production of the ink was not obvious by the courts?
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