A.&P. Analysis
In the Supreme Court case A. &P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Corp., the Supreme Court determined that the patent for a cashier’s counter was not valid because the combination of devices in the counter did not perform any different or additional function than the devices performed on their own. Simply put, the whole was still the same as the sum of its parts. My patent and its references would not be patentable under the requirements of the A. &P. case.
The pedal braking invention consists of a skateboard and a pedal attached to a friction device that comes into contact with the rear wheels when the pedal is pressed. The patent itself admits a regular skateboard was a commercial object prior to the pedal braking invention and braking devices for wheeled vehicles were also a prior art. The braking/steering invention also consists of a skateboard with an arm attached to a friction device (brake shoes). My patent also consisted of a braking system attached to a skateboard.
A braking device for a wheeled vehicle was intended to do exactly what it sounds like, cause a wheeled vehicle to come to a stop when the brakes are engaged. A skateboard was intended to transport a rider, much the same as a vehicle. For the pedal braking invention, the braking/steering invention, and my patent, their parts perform the same functions in their combinations as they did outside the combinations. Under the requirements of the case, these do not qualify for a patent. Even though the combinations produced better results than those seen before, their parts still performed the same functions they did before being in the combinations, so the patents would not be valid.
The reason that all three of these patents were valid when they were filed (after the A. &P. case) was because they did have inventiveness. Each was inventive in its own way to accomplish the same goal of stopping a skateboard, which had not been done before. Also their inventions took more skill than that possessed by the average person in the field of skateboard design.
