Brenner, Commissioner of Patents v. Manson
United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
333 F.2d 234 (D.C. Cir. 1964)
Manson (plaintiff) filed a patent application for a chemical process for making known steroids, but two other inventors had filed a competing application for the same process three years earlier. Manson sought an interference proceeding based on prior inventorship, but the patent examiner rejected his application because it failed to show any utility for the steroids the process produced. The Patent Office Board of Appeals affirmed, but the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) reversed in Manson's favor, and Brenner, the Commissioner of Patents (defendant), appealed.
Whether a chemical process can satisfy the patent law's utility requirement when its only known result is a product that itself has no established, patentable utility.