Corona Cord Tire Co. v. Donovan Chem. Corp., 276 U.S. 358 (1928)
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Corona Cord Tire Company v. Donovan Chemical Corporation
No. 182
Argued January 16, 17, 1928
Decided April 9, 1928
276 U.S. 358
CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
Syllabus
1. Discovery that a change of ingredients in a process speeds the result entitles the inventor to any other advantages flowing from the substitution. P. 369.
2. The fact that a party was the first to discover and obtain a valid patent for a process of producing a substance held irrelevant to the question whether he was the first discoverer of its utility as an ingredient in another process. P. 370.
3. Under Rev.Stats. § 4886, a person is not to be denied a patent because of a publication printed after his discovery and not more than two years before his application. P. 372.
4. Invention of a process for vulcanizing rubber, and its reduction to practice, may be established by proof of actual tests in which test slabs of rubber, properly vulcanized, were made. Production of rubber goods for use or sale was not indispensable. Pp. 373, 383.
5. Reckless overstatements of the extent of earlier reduction to practice by the applicant, made in affidavits filed in a patent proceeding to meet a reference of prior publication, held not destructive of the presumption of validity accompanying the patent where the sufficiency of the affidavits in other respects rendered such statements superfluous. P. 374.
6. Where a patentee met a reference in the patent proceeding merely by evidence of his own priority of discovery, his failure then to attack its sufficiency in other respects did not subject him to the burden of proving it insufficient in a suit to enjoin infringement of the patent. P. 374.
7. The findings of a trial court which heard the witnesses are not conclusive here when contrary to the findings of the circuit court of appeals made in the same case, and of the trial court in another case, upon the same evidence. P. 375.
8. Priority of discovery may be proved by one witness, not financially interested, in connection with other circumstances. P. 382.
9. One who first discovered and proved the utility of an improvement in a process cannot be said to have abandoned his invention, as against a subsequent discoverer or patentee, because he did not use the discovery commercially or apply for a patent. P. 384.
10. A claim to the exclusive use of a large group of related chemical compounds, unsupported by proof that all have a common quality rendering each useful in the process patented, is too broad. P. 385.
11. Patent No. 1,411,231, issued March 28, 1922, to Weiss for a process of vulcanizing rubber by combining with the rubber compound, diphenylguanidine, or "a disubstituted guanidine," and for the vulcanized product, held invalid. P. 385.
16 F.2d 419 reversed.
Certiorari, 273 U.S. 692, to a decree of the circuit court of appeals which reversed a decree of the district court, 10 F.2d 298, dismissing a bill to enjoin infringement of a patent. See also Dovan Chemical Corp’n v. Nat’l Aniline Co., 292 F. 555.