Packwood v. Briggs & Stratton Corp.

HASTIE, Circuit Judge.

In a patent infringement suit a jury found plaintiff’s patent valid and infringed ■by defendants. Thereafter, the trial judge, while candidly stating his own conviction that the patent was invalid for lack of invention, denied defendants’ motion for judgment n. o. v., reasoning that he had no authority to substitute his judgment on the contested issue of invention for that of the jury. On this appeal we have to decide whether this deliberate self restraint was error or proper deference to the role and action of the jury.

In essence-, the alleged invention is a rotating…