Black v. Richfield Oil Corp.

The subject matter of this suit is an agreement made in 1925 between appellant Black and the Pan American Petroleum Company by the terms of which Black licensed the use of certain of his inventions in consideration of the payment of a royalty. The controversy arose because of the omission from the agreement of Black’s patent application No. 599,403, filed November 6, 1922. This application culminated in the issuance on March 30, 1937 of patent No. 2,075,164. Cf. Gasoline Products Co. v. Coe, 66 App.D.C. 333 , 87 F.2d 550 . The patent relates to the use of chrome alloy tubing in the cracking of oil in lieu of the ordinary steel or iron tubes previously employed in the process. The advantage of using chromium alloy is that *802 it is resistant to the corrosive effects of sulphur present in petroleum.

Black was plaintiff below. In the first count of his complaint he sought a declaration of rights under the licensing agreement. In the second he asked that the agreement be reformed so as to include his patent described above. The third count was for an accounting. The court thought that the omitted invention could not properly be supplied by resort to extrinsic evidence of intention…

(dissenting).

I dissent. While there are important ultimate factual issues in this case, they are created almost, if not quite, of undisputed material facts. I have been unable to fit these material facts into the conclusions reached by my associates. In short, I think, the contract between appellant and Richfield (old company) cannot be fairly read as excluding the patent, specific mention of which was inadvertently omitted from the patent list written into the contract. Therefore, I think that this court should direct a finding along these lines and that an accounting should follow.