In re Mond's Appeal
In re Mond's Appeal
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court:
The appellant, Ludwig Mond, claiming to be the inventor of a process for the manufacture of zinc — that is, for the extraction of zinc from the zinc ore — applied for letters patent therefor; and being denied by the Commissioner of Patents, who affirmed the decision of the primary examiner and of the board of examiners in chief to the same effect, he has appealed to this court. The claim of invention is thus stated by the applicant in an amendment of his specification, and by the primary examiner in his statement:
“The herein described improvement in the manufacture of zinc which consists in lixiviating roasted zinc ores by a solution of caustic soda or potash, electrolyzing the solution of zinc oxide thus obtained with an anode of sodium or potassium amalgam, and causing deposit of zinc on a metallic cathode, as specified.”
About two years previously to the application in the present case, the appellant had filed in the Patent Office an application substantially identical to some extent with the present, and in which he had stated his claim in these terms:
“ The herein-described process for reducing a metallic oxide which is soluble in a caustic alkali by introducing
This first presented claim, it appears, had been rejected in the Patent Office by the primary examiner, as having been anticipated by an English patent of Squire and Currie for the same or a similar process; and the decision of the examiner was affirmed by the board of examiners in chief and by the Commissioner of Patents on appeal. The applicant seems to have acquiesced in the final decision of the Commissioner; for he took no further steps in the case. The present claim differs from its predecessor only in two particulars: First, in the mention of zinc specifically as the metal to be extracted from the metallic oxide ; and, second, in the introduction into the claim of the preliminary step of producing the zincate solution by lixiviation of roasted zinc ores by caustic alkali solutions.
We fully concur with the primary examiner and the tribunals of the Patent Office, that the first modification, that is, the limitation of the claim to the production of zinc merely, does not add to the patentability of the alleged invention. If a process for the reduction of any and all metallic oxides is not patentable, it is difficult to say how the same process for one specific metal oxide, the oxide of zinc, can be patentable. The whole necessarily includes the part. The genus includes the species. No great insistence seems to be made on this point before us, and we must hold that it is not tenable.
The principal, if not the exclusive, contention of the appellant is, that by the second modification and by the combination of all the elements therein aggregated he has discovered a novel and useful process. But this contention
Now, the addition of one well known process to another well known process does not constitute invention unless some different or better result is produced than that which had been previously obtained; and it is not apparent here that there has been any such result. The production of a solution of zinc by treating roasted zinc ore with a solution of caustic soda or potash and the subjection of the solution so obtained to an electrolyzing process, is precisely what Squire and Currie did under their patent. It is impossible, therefore, that it should now be a novelty patentable to this appellant, unless there is something novel in the electrolyzing process; but the same electrolyzing process appears also in the patent to Squire and Currie, and seems likewise to have been anticipated in an English patent to Charles Kellner, which appears in the record. This same electrolyzing process it is for which the applicant had made his previous application, which was rejected by the Patent Office as unpatentable in view of the previous state of the art, and which must now be regarded as an abandoned claim. That rejection has been treated in this case as an adjudication of the applicant’s claim, and it is an adjudication which it does not seem to be proper for us to review in this proceeding, even if the record contained the necessary material for such review, which may be doubted.
It seems to be conceded by the appellant that there is no
The clerk of the court will certify this opinion and the proceedings of this court in the premises to the Commissioner of Patents, according to law.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.