Harlan F. Stone

“ Inherent flexibility of the web in cooperation with the slit skirt cannot be depended upon to produce the desired effect in rendering the skirt yieldable in response to cylinder wall pressure. As respondent's own expert testified, that depends upon design of the web, with correct proportioning of the different parts as to location and thickness to produce lateral flexibility. Inherent rigidity, made more effective by design of the webs, would correspondingly curtail the desired effect. ”

“ As flexible webs are neither described in Maynard's specifications nor mentioned in his claims, they can be imported into them only by reference to the drawings or by inference from the inherent flexibility of the structure, which, for reasons already given in our consideration of the Gulick amendments, are insufficient to accomplish that result. We conclude that the court below erred in giving any effect to so much of the Gulick patent as by amendment describes or claims the flexible webs, and in treating any of the specifications or claims in Gulick and Maynard as referring to such webs. ”

“ The argument suggests that it was but the skill of the art, and not invention, to substitute a flexible for a rigid means of connecting head and skirt in a known combination of piston head separated from a slitted skirt by an air space and connected by webs. But in any case we think it falls short of establishing that the Gulick amendments were not new matter beyond the scope of the device described in the application as filed.
The properties of any given material are many and diverse. The antithetical qualities of rigidity and flexibility of a structure are not absolute but relative ”

“ A sentence added after formal allowance of the patent states: 'By the term 'plurality of wave lengths' or 'plurality of half wave lengths' or 'several half wave lengths' it is not intended that the wires so described shall necessarily be an exact or approximate integral number of such lengths, unless so specified, but rather that each of the wires so described shall be sufficiently long to enclude the lengths specified.' These amendments operated to modify the Abraham formula so as to cancel from the application the statement of the scientific law defining the invention. ”

“ While a scientific truth, or the mathematical expression of it, is not patentable invention, a novel and useful structure created with the aid of knowledge of scientific truth may be. But we do not stop to solve the problem whether it was more than the skill of the art to combine the teaching of Abraham with that of Lindenblad and others who had pointed out that the arrangement of the wires at an angle enhanced directional radio activity along their bisector. ”

“ The first authorizes forfeiture of taxable 'articles' found in the possession, custody, or control of any person 'for the purpose of being sold or removed by him in fraud of the internal-revenue laws.' The second authorizes forfeiture of 'raw materials found in the possession of any person intending to manufacture the same into articles of a kind subject to tax,' with intent to defraud the revenue. ”

“ We cannot assume that Congress was of the opinion that the present agency, when appropriately organized for the purpose, would be any the less able to function without the power in the Administrator to delegate the signing and issuance of subpoenas than the Federal Trade Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and other agencies which have not been given and do not assert the power. ”

“ Even if those skilled in the art would have known that a piston with webs which would yield enough laterally to accommodate the constriction of the split skirt under the pressure developed by thermal expansion would work most effectively if the webs were laterally flexible rather than rigid, that was not the invention which Gulick described by his references to an extremely rigid web. ”

“ Since rigidity is a relative term, the characterization of the structure as rigid must be taken as emphasizing rigidity rather than its opposite, flexibility, with special reference to the conditions to be encountered in the operation of the piston. ”

“ From this he argues that Congress must have intended that he should be permitted to delegate his authority to sign and issue subpoenas. But this argument loses force when examined in the light of related provisions of the Act and of the actual course of Congressional legislation in this field.
Unlimited authority of an administrative officer to delegate the exercise of the subpoena power is not lightly to be inferred. It is a power capable of oppressive use, especially when it may be indiscriminately delegated and the subpoena is not returnable before a judicial officer. ”

“ In designing gas engines for automobiles and other purposes requiring a high speed piston reciprocation with the accompanying development of high temperature in the explosion chamber, it is desirable to avoid thermal expansion of the close fitting piston, which will result in loss of power and possible injury to the mechanism through increased friction, which may cause the piston to seize or stick. ”

“ All these are cogent reasons for inferring an intention of Congress not to give unrestricted authority to delegate the subpoena power which it has in terms granted only to the responsible head of the agency.
The subpoena power differs materially in these respects from the power to gather data and make investigations which is expressly made delegable by § 11. Without the subpoena that power is in effect a power of inspection at the employer's place of business to be exercised only on his consent. ”

“ If invention depends on emphasis of one quality over the other, as the court below found was the case with the laterally flexible webs in the Gulick devise, the statute requires that emphasis to be revealed to the members of the public, who are entitled to know what invention is claimed. ”

“ After petitioner had answered and respondent, as a result of the litigation, had acquired knowledge of the particulars of the structure and operation of petitioner's antennae, Carter, respondent's assignor, amended the statement of his invention in his application so as in terms to embrace a differentiating feature of petitioner's structures. After this patent was issued respondent was permitted to file a supplemental bill charging infringement of it. The suits were consolidated, and the parties proceeded to trial on the issues of the validity and infringement of all five patents. ”

“ Under the present Act, the subpoena may, as in this case, be used to compel production at a distant place of practically all of the books and records of a manufacturing business, covering considerable periods of time. True, there can be no penalty incurred for contempt before there is a judicial order of enforcement. ”

“ Lindenblad had indicated a preferred angle, and Bruce, before Carter, had plotted a rule of thumb graph, which the trial court found to be prior art, showing the directional radio activity of a V antenna and exhibiting relatively small variations from that of Carter. Carter, avoiding prior art by defining his angle for antennae with wires of particular wave lengths with mathematical precision, cannot discard that precision to establish infringement. ”

“ It is important for the proper functioning of the piston in a gas engine that it should fit the explosion chamber closely so as to conserve power, prevent the passage of lubricating oil around the piston into the chamber, and insure the smooth and noiseless movement of the piston within the cylinder. ”

“ The danger of undue expansion is increased when, as is advantageous in automobile engines, the piston is of aluminum, which has a higher coefficient of expansion than the iron or steel chamber within which the piston moves. ”

“ The effective part of the antenna is a copper wire from which the radio waves are radiated, supported on towers or poles at a height above the ground depending on the wave length used. The wire may be parallel with the earth, or vertical, or arranged at an angle, depending upon the function to be performed. ”

“ The present Carter patent is for an 'antenna system utilizing standing wave phenomena.' Like the second Lindenblad patent, it is concerned with a V antenna by which the principal radiation is directed in the plane of the wires along the bisector of their angle. ”

“ Respondent, the Cleveland Trust Company, is the assignee in trust of some eighty patents relating to pistons of the type employed in internal combustion engines for automobiles, under a pooling agreement to which an automobile manufacturer and a number of manufacturers of pistons are parties. ”

“ We think that the words of the section, read in their statutory setting, make it reasonably plain that its only function is to provide that the Administrator and his representatives may exercise either within or without the District of Columbia such powers as each possesses. ”

“ The separation by the revisers of the first clause from the other two by a period instead of a semicolon, retaining the conjunction 'And,' and the dropping of the conjunction 'also' from the second and third clauses, are changes hardly substantial enough to warrant any changed construction of the section. ”