Gelardin v. Revlon Products Corp‪.‬

This is an appeal from a judgment, dismissing the complaint in a patent infringement action because of the invalidity of the patent - No. 2,318,152. The primary object of the invention is to disclose "a cosmetic holder, all parts of which are wholly composed of plastic material"; and the mechanism disclosed was, in general, concededly old: that is to say: "a cosmetic holder in which the carrier for the cosmetic is advanced by the relative rotation of two slotted members." However, no such holder had theretofore been made wholly of plastic; and hence the claims. It would serve no purpose verbally to describe the disclosure in detail, or that of Patent No. 2,104,902, issued to Morrison, on January 11, 1938, upon which the judge particularly relied to invalidate the patent in suit. The parallelism between the two cannot be satisfactorily shown without the figures; and we are obliged to assume a familiarity with these in our discussion. We shall consider the issue of validity in two aspects: (1) whether it was an invention to change from metal to plastic; (2) whether, if not, Gelardins modifications of Morrisons disclosure can support his patent.