Geschmacksmuster

Stiffel Company secured design and mechanical patents on a pole lamp. The lamp was a vertical tube having lamp fixtures along the outside and constructed to stand upright between floor and ceiling. Pole lamps achieved commercial success after Stiffel brought them to market. Sears, Roebuck & Company subsequently placed on the market a substantially identical lamp that it sold at a lower price. Its retail price matched Stiffel's wholesale price. Stiffel brought an action against Sears in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Its first count claimed that Sears had infringed the patents by copying the design. The second count alleged that Sears had engaged in unfair competition under Illinois law by causing confusion in the trade as to the source of the lamps. Evidence introduced included the absence of identifying tags on Sears lamps, although labels appeared on the cartons delivered to customers. Additional evidence showed customer inquiries to Stiffel about differences from Sears lamps and complaints from two customers who had purchased Stiffel lamps upon learning of the cheaper Sears versions. After determining that the patents were invalid for want of invention, the District Court found as a fact that Sears' lamp was a substantially exact copy of Stiffel's. The lamps were so alike in appearance and functional details that confusion between them was likely and had already occurred in some cases. The court then entered judgment against Sears on the unfair competition claim. It enjoined Sears from selling or attempting to sell pole lamps identical to or confusingly similar to Stiffel's lamp. The court also ordered an accounting to determine profits and damages. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's judgment. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the question presented by the case.

Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw submitted a patent application to the Patent and Trademark Office seeking protection for a method allowing buyers and sellers of commodities in the energy market to hedge against the risk of price changes. Claim 1 describes a series of steps for initiating transactions between a commodity provider and consumers at a fixed rate based on historical averages, identifying market participants with a counter-risk position, and initiating transactions with those participants at a second fixed rate to balance the risk. Claim 4 reduces the hedging concept to a simple mathematical formula. Additional claims apply the method to energy markets and suggest the use of statistical techniques such as random analysis to determine inputs. The patent examiner rejected the application on the ground that it was not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulated an abstract idea while solving a purely mathematical problem without any limitation to a practical application. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed the examiner’s rejection, concluding that the application involved only mental steps that do not transform physical matter and was directed to an abstract idea. Petitioners appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which heard the case en banc and affirmed the rejection. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Federal Circuit’s judgment.

Markman owns United States Reissue Patent No. 33,054 for his Inventory Control and Reporting System for Drycleaning Stores. The patent describes a system that can monitor and report the status, location, and movement of clothing in a dry-cleaning establishment. The Markman system consists of a keyboard and data processor to generate written records for each transaction, including a bar code readable by optical detectors operated by employees, who log the progress of clothing through the dry-cleaning process. Respondent Westview's product also includes a keyboard and processor, and it lists charges for the dry-cleaning services on bar-coded tickets that can be read by portable optical detectors. Markman brought an infringement suit against Westview and Althon Enterprises, an operator of dry-cleaning establishments using Westview’s products. Part of the dispute hinged upon the meaning of the word inventory, a term found in Markman’s independent claim 1, which states that Markman’s product can maintain an inventory total and detect and localize spurious additions to inventory. The case was tried before a jury, which heard, among others, a witness produced by Markman who testified about the meaning of the claim language. After the jury compared the patent to Westview’s device, it found an infringement of Markman’s independent claim 1 and dependent claim 10. The District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted Westview’s deferred motion for judgment as a matter of law. One of its reasons was that the term inventory in Markman’s patent encompasses both cash inventory and the actual physical inventory of articles of clothing. The court directed a verdict on the ground that Westview’s device does not have the means to maintain an inventory total. Markman appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which affirmed the district court’s judgment. Markman sought review, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Harshaw Chemical Co., an unincorporated division of petitioner Kewanee Oil Co., commenced research in 1949 into the growth of synthetic crystals useful in the detection of ionizing radiation and was able to produce one less than two inches in diameter. By 1966, as the result of expenditures in excess of one million dollars, Harshaw was able to grow a seventeen-inch crystal, something no one else had done previously. Harshaw had developed many processes, procedures, and manufacturing techniques in the purification of raw materials and the growth and encapsulation of the crystals which enabled it to accomplish this feat. Some of these processes Harshaw considers to be trade secrets. The individual respondents are former employees of Harshaw who formed or later joined respondent Bicron. While at Harshaw the individual respondents executed, as a condition of employment, at least one agreement each, requiring them not to disclose confidential information or trade secrets obtained as employees of Harshaw. Bicron was formed in August 1969 to compete with Harshaw in the production of the crystals, and by April 1970 had grown a seventeen-inch crystal. Petitioner brought this diversity action in United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio seeking injunctive relief and damages for the misappropriation of trade secrets. The District Court, applying Ohio trade secret law, granted a permanent injunction against the disclosure or use by respondents of twenty of the forty claimed trade secrets until such time as the trade secrets had been released to the public, had otherwise generally become available to the public, or had been obtained by respondents from sources having the legal right to convey the information. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the findings of fact by the District Court were not clearly erroneous and that the District Court properly applied Ohio law relating to trade secrets. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, finding Ohio's trade secret law to be in conflict with the patent laws of the United States. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a question on which there is a conflict in the courts of appeals: whether state trade secret protection is preempted by operation of the federal patent law.