Funk Bros Seed Company v. Kalo Inoculant Company/Dissent Burton

Mr. Justice BURTON, with whom Mr. Justice JACKSON concurs, dissenting.

On the grounds stated by the Circuit Court of Appeals the judgment should be affirmed.

When the patentee discovered the existence of certain strains of bacteria which, when combined with certain other strains of bacteria, would infect two or more leguminous plants without loss of their respective nitrogen-fixing efficiencies, and utilized this discovery by segregating some of these mutually non-inhibitive strains and combining such strains into composite inoculants, we agree with Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER that the combinations so produced satisfied the statutory requirements of invention or discovery. These products were a promt and substantial commercial success, filling a long-sought and important agricultural need.

However, we do not agree that the patent issued for such products is invl id for want of a clear, concise description of how the combinations were made and used. The statutory requirement is that the inventor or discoverer-

'shall file in the Patent Office a written description of the same, and of the manner and process of making, constructing, compounding, and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make, construct, compound, and use the same; and in case of a machine, he shall explain the principle thereof, and the best mode in which he has contemplated applying that principle, so as to distinguish it from other inventions; and he shall particularly point out and distinctly claim the part, improvement, or combination which he claims as his invention or discovery. * *  * No plant patent shall be declared invalid on the ground of noncompliance with this section if the description is made as complete as is reasonably possible.'

The completeness and character of the description must vary with the subject to be described. Machines lend themselves readily to descriptions in terms of mechanical principles and physical characteristics. On the other hand, it may be that a combination of strains of bacterial species, which strains are distinguished from one another and recognized in practice solely by their observed effects, can be definable reasonably only in terms of those effects. In the present case, the patentee has defined the combinations in terms of their mutually inhibiting and non-inhibiting effects upon their respective abilities to take free nitrogen from the air and place it in the soil. These combinations were discovered by observation of these effects-they are in practice identified by these effects for the commercial uses for which they are made. It is these effects that differentiate them from the other bacteria heretofore generally identified only as common members of the same species and not commercially valuable for use with leguminous plants of more than one of the groups named in the opinion of the Court. The identification of the strains stated in the patent is that which the patentee used in making the novel combinations of them that have been shown to be highly useful. There appears to be no question but that the petitioners are now able to identify and use the strains in the manner described in the patent. The record thus indicates that the description is sufficiently full, clear, concise and exact to enable persons skilled in the art or science to which this discovery appertains or with which it is most nearly connected to make, construct, compound and use the same. There is no suggestion as to how it would be reasonably possible to describe the patented product more completely. The patent covers all composite cultures of bacterial strains of the species described which do not inhibit each other's ability to fix nitrogen. Bacteriologists, skilled in the applicable art, will not have difficulty in selecting the non-inhibitive strains by employing such standard and recognized laboratory tests as are described in the application for this patent.

The statute itself shows that Congress has recognized the inherent difficulty presented. While this patent may not be technically a 'plant patent' in the precise sense in which that term is used in this Section, the references in the Section to the differences in descriptions expected in mechanical patents and plant patents obviously support the position here taken. An inventor should not be denied a patent upon an otherwise patentable discovery merely because the nature of the discovery defies description in conventional terms. Terms ordinarily unsuitable to describe and distinguish products that are capable of description and distinction by their appearance may be the most appropriate in which to describe and distingus h other products that are not reasonably possible of identification by their appearance, but which are easily identified by their effects when being sought for or described by those skilled in the art.