Kaiser Industries Corp. V. Mclouth Steel Corp‪.‬

Appellants filed an action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan complaining that Appellee had infringed the Appellants' patented process for refining steel with pure oxygen. Appellee first defended by contending that a know-how agreement, for which Appellee paid $100,000 to Appellants, constituted a license to use the Appellants' process. The District Court held against the Appellee on that point, Henry J. Kaiser Company v. McLouth Steel Corporation, 175 F. Supp. 743 (D.C.Mich.1959), and in an interlocutory appeal was affirmed by this Court. McLouth Steel Corporation v. Henry J. Kaiser Company, 277 F.2d 458 (6th Cir.1960). These rulings made it possible for the Appellee to contest the validity of the Appellants' patent at the trial on infringement.*fn1 The handling of the protracted trial on infringement by the District Judge was a monumental task, which he performed ably and well. After unusually long and complex litigation, involving several years of pretrial research, experimentation and discovery and over an entire calendar year of trial, the District Court concluded that the patentees were the inventors of a process that was not anticipated by the prior art and would not have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of the discovery. The Court held the patent invalid, however, for the reason that the specifications did not support the claims and the claims did not measure the invention as required by 35 U.S.C. § 112 and for the further reason that the claims covered the prior art.*fn1a Henry J. Kaiser Co. v. McLouth Steel Corp., 257 F. Supp. 372 (D.C.Mich.1966). From that judgment the Appellants have perfected the instant appeal contesting the Court's rulings covering the claims and specifications; and in addition the Appellee has contested the District Court's holdings on obviousness and inventorship.