Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

35 F.2d 70

Docket Patent Appeal No. 2246.

In re Eifel

Court of Customs and Patent Appeals

Decided October 4, 1929.

Court of Customs and Patent Appeals · decided 1929-10-04

2 counsel of record

Relies on H. D. Smith & Co. v. Peck

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1929-10-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently December 1954

101929193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Court oí Customs and Patent Appeals.

¶2Paul Carpenter and Ralph B. Stewart, both of Washington, D. C., for appellant.

¶3T. A. Hostetler, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.

¶4Before GRAHAM, Presiding Judge, and BLAND, HATFIELD, GARRETT, and LENROOT, Associate Judges.

¶5BLAND, Associate Judge.

¶6Joseph Eifel appealed from the decision of the Commissioner of Patents, refusing to issue a patent to him for what he termed “certain new and useful improvements in design for wrenches.”

¶7The Commissioner’s denial of the application was based chiefly on the following grounds, mentioned in the decision:

“The appellant’s wrench may be distinctive as to appearance in minor details, but such distinctiveness has reference to strac*71tural features devised for utilitarian purposes, rather than for the purpose of ornamentation.”

¶8The Commissioner further said that the claim was rejected:

On the ground that the design is not patentable over the disclosures of the cited patent; also, that such differences as exist are for utilitarian rather than ornamental purposes.”

¶9The general configuration of the wrench of appellant’s design is substantially the same as that of the combination tool, shown in M. M. Berg, 1,364,829, January 4, 1921, 81/53. Additional useful modifications have been made over the Berg patent, but there is no ornamentation possessing'originality and beauty sufficient to justify granting a design patent under the statute, the purpose of which has oftimes been declared to be to encourage art and decoration which appeals to the esthetic sense. Smith & Co. v. Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co. (C. C. A.) 262 F. 415; Ex parte Parkinson, 1871 C. D. 251.

¶10The rejection of the application by the Commissioner seems to he based upon well-settled principles. Nothing has been shown to us to indicate that the decision was erroneous. The Commissioner’s decision is therefore affirmed.

¶11Affirmed.

/35/f2d/70 · .json · Public domain