Alcor Aviation, Inc. v. Radair Incorporated, a Corporation, Successor to Radair, Inc., and Uniwest, Inc.

Alcor Aviation, Inc. (Alcor) is the assignee of Patent No. 3,154,060, filed in 1962 and granted in 1964, which relates to an apparatus and method for manually setting the fuel-air mixture of internal combustion gasoline engines by reference to exhaust gas temperature. Al-cor sued Radair Incorporated (Radair) for infringement and infringement was admitted if the patent was valid. The district court held all six claims under the patent invalid for obviousness, 35 U.S.C. § 103 , and lack of novelty, 35 U.S.C. § 102 (a), (b). Alcor appeals only the ruling on the validity of claim 6, which relates to a method of controlling the fuel-air mixture of an engine on a flying aircraft. Alcor has disclaimed apparatus claims 1 and 2, as well as method claims 3, 4 and 5. We affirm the district court’s holding that claim 6 lacked inventiveness because it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the pertinent art. Thus we need not consider other grounds also used by the district court upon which the patent was found to be invalid.

Gasoline piston engines ignite a mixture of air and gasoline for combustion and proper performance depends upon a correct ratio of gas to air.…