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47 F.2d 957

Docket Patent Appeal No. 2631.

In re Marden

Court of Customs and Patent Appeals · decided 1931-03-25

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Uranium is a product of nature, and the appellant is not entitled to a patent on the same, or upon any of the inherent natural qualities of that metal.” (Emphasis supplied).”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 152 F. Supp. 690 - Merck & Co. v. Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp.

Relies on General Electric Co. v. De Forest Radio Co. · In re Marden

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1931-03-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently August 2012

11 federal appellate ·

100193119401950196019701980199020002010decided

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.

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¶1See, also, 47 F.(2d) 958.

¶2Max F. Reges, of Bloomfield, N. J. (Raymond Jones, of Washington, D. C., of counsel), for appellant.

¶3T. A. Hostetler, of Washington, D. C. (Howard S. Miller, of Washington, D. C., of counsel), for Commissioner of Patents.

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

¶5GRAHAM, Presiding Judge.

¶6The appellant has appealed from a decision of the Board of Appeals, rejecting his claims 18 to’ 32; inclusive, of his application for a patent upon processes of manufacture of, and products of, uranium. The rejected claims are product claims, the appellant having been allowed, in the Patent Office, certain process claims in his application, and which are said to fully cover the process hy which his product is obtained. The appellant states that claims! 18, 22; 26, 29, 30, and 32 are typical, and they are here given:

¶7“18. As a now article, ductile uranium.

¶8“22. Uranium in wire form.

¶9“26. A filamentary body of ductile uranium.

¶10“29. An electrode of ductile uranium.

¶11“30. A cathode of ductile uranium.

¶12“32. A target of ductile uranium.”

¶13The Board of Appeals rejected the claims on the reference Liebmann, No. 1,111,698, of September 22, 1914, and upon the authority of General Electric Co. v. De Forest Radio Co. (C. C. A.) 28 F.(2d) 641, 643.

¶14We are of opinion the rejection of these claims was properly made.

¶15Uranium is a product of nature, and the appellant is not entitled to a patent on the same, or upon any of the inherent natural qualities of that metal. Uranium was discovered in 17891 by Klaproth, in experiment- ■ ing with pitchblende. Its qualities have been well known for many years. Watts Dictionary of Chemistry, published in 1907, volume IV, page 821, states that uranium is “A lustrous, hard, silver-white metal” andl that it “is somewhat malleable.” Thorpe’s Dictionary of Applied Chemistry, published in 1905, volume III, page 893, states that uranium is “malleable and silver white, resembling nickel in colour.” Malleability is, in some instances, as defined hy Webster, synonymous with ductility. There is, therefore, nothing new and no invention in the product of ductile uranium.

¶16Nor can there be said to be anything inventive in uranium wire, or in an electrode, cathode, or target made of this metal. It is not claimed that these are new articles, not known to the art. The ease of General Elec*958tric Co. v. De Forest Radio Co., supra, involved similar claims, the metal in that case being tungsten. The claims there were substantially as here, as, for instance, claims 24 and 26, which were as follows:

¶17“24. A wire formed of duetile tungsten.

¶18“26. Substantially purel tungsten having ductility and high tensile strength.”

¶19The Circuit Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit found, as we are here finding, that the applicant was not entitled to a patent upon a product of nature, or upon one of its qualities, and that a tungsten wire was an obvious use to be made of tungsten., The same may be said of an electrode, a cathode, or a target, all of which are well known in the arts to which they belong.

¶20In this connection reference is hereby had . to In re Marden et al., 47 F. (2d) 958, 18 C. C. P. A. —.

¶21What we have said renders it unnecessary to discuss the Liebmann reference. However, it may be said that this reference discloses that the patentee, in 1914, obtained a process patent upon ductile .high fusing metals, among which was enumerated uranium. A good deal of discussion has arisen in this ease as to whether the process disclosed by Liebmann in said patent is operable when applied to uranium. That question becomes immaterial, in view of what we have heretofore said.

¶22The decision of the Board of Appeals is affirmed.

¶23Affirmed.

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