science

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co.

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. rather than just read about it. In short: Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238 (1944), is a much cited 1944 decision of the United States Supreme Court dealing with fraud on the Patent Office.

Key takeaways

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238 (1944), is a much cited 1944 decision of the United States Supreme Court dealing with fraud on the Patent Office. A widely quoted statement in the Court's opinion is: "The public welfare demands that the agencies of public justice be not so impotent that they must always be mute and helpless victims of deception and fraud." Although the fraud occurred in the late 1920s, the facts became public only much later in the Government's antitrust trial in United States v. Hartford-Empire Co.

Background

In 1926 Hartford had a pending Peiler patent application on a "gob feeder" glass-making machine. The Patent Office confronted Hartford with "apparently insurmountable opposition." To help persuade the Office to grant the application, Hartford's patent attorney R.F. Hatch "ghost-wrote" a trade journal article for a union official, Clarke, praising the invention as a revolutionary advance, and paying him to sign it. Hartford's patent attorneys Brown and Dorsey brought the published article to the attention of the Patent Office. The Office then issued the patent (U.S. Patent No. 1,655,391), in 1928. Hartford then sued Hazel for infringing the patent. The district court dismissed the bill, however, on the ground that no infringement had been proved. The court considered the patent to be at best only a slight improvement in a well-developed art (automatic feeders for mechanical glass bottle blowing), accordingly held that the claims were not entitled to a broad construction and that, with the Peiler patent so construed, Hazel had not infringed. Hartford appealed to the Third Circuit; its patent attorneys, including the one who "had played a part in getting the spurious article prepared for publication," for the first time focused the court's attention on the article. The court's opinion quoted copiously from the article and reversed the district court, holding the patent valid and infringed. In contrast to the district court, the Third Circuit considered the patent to be a pioneer (as Clarke maintained), so that the claims were entitled to a broad construction. Therefore, with the patent claims so construed, the Third Circuit held that Hazel infringed a valid patent. During trial in the district court in 1929, Hazel had received hearsay information that both Clarke and one of Hartford's lawyers had, several years previously, admitted that a Hartford lawyer was the true author of the spurious publication. Hazel did not at that time attempt to verify the truth of the hearsay story of the article's authorship, but relied upon other defenses, which proved successful in the district court. After the opinion of the Third Circuit in 1932, quoting the spurious article and reversing the decree of the district court, Hazel hired private investigators for the purpose of verifying the hearsay by admissible evidence. One of the PIs interviewed Clarke twice. In each interview, Clarke insisted that he wrote the article, and would so swear if summoned to court. In the second interview, the investigator asked Clarke to sign a statement telling in detail how the article was prepared, and further asked to see Clarke's files. Clarke replied that he would not "stultify" himself by signing any "statement or affidavit;" and that he would show the records to no one unless compelled by a subpoena. At the same time, he reinforced his claim of authorship by asserting that he had spent seven weeks in preparing the article. Unknown to Hazel, a Hartford representative had gone to visit Clarke. Hazel's PI reported failure, but Hartford's man reported "very successful results," that Hartford was in a "most satisfactory position" in the matter, and that Clarke had signed an affidavit for him stating that Clarke had "signed the article and released it for publication." Hazel then capitulated in the patent infringement litigation and settled with Hartford for $1 million, and the parties entered into a cross-licensing agreement. Hartford's representative then went back to Clarke, who asked for $10,000; they negotiated (Hartford initially said $$10,000 was too much) but Hartford eventually paid him the full $10,000. These facts came out during the Government's Hartford-Empire trial in 1941.

Renewed Third Circuit review Hazel then filed in the Third Circuit a petition for leave to file a somewhat belated bill of review in the district court to set aside the 1932 judgment which that court entered against Hazel pursuant to the Third Circuit's mandate overturning the district court's judgment of non-infringement. Hazel contended that the Third Circuit's appellate judgment had been obtained by fraud. The Third Circuit decided that because the alleged fraud had been perpetrated on it, rather than on the district court, it should decide the case instead of having the district court consider a bill of review. The Third Circuit considered the evidence of how Hartford's patent attorneys wrote the article for Clarke, had it published, and then presented it to the Patent Office. It concluded, however, that "sordid as is the story concerning the genesis of the Clarke article and the deceptive design and use of its spurious authorship, still it does not qualify as after-discovered evidence" in Hartford's infringement suit against Hazel. The court pointed to Hazel's knowledge of the hearsay during the trial in 1929. "Although then so informed, counsel for Hazel-Atlas deliberately chose not to go into the matter of the article's real authorship, fearing that if they should refer to the article (which was not in evidence), they might thereby call attention to the statements therein contained as to the increased production from gob feeders as compared with stream feeders, which could not be successfully refuted." The Third Circuit also emphasized that although the authorship of the article had been falsified, it was not shown that its factual assertions were false. Therefore, the fraud was not "material." Accordingly, "In the situation shown, it is not possible for us to say that the Clarke article was so basic to this court's decision in the Hazel-Atlas case that, upon the showing of fraud in the article's authorship, we would be justified in setting aside the order[]." The Third Circuit also held that it lacked power to set aside its 1932 of infringement and must dismiss the case:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co.

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co.

In research: Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Glass industry, United States Supreme Court cases, United States Supreme Court cases in 1944, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co.” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. in simple terms?

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238 (1944), is a much cited 1944 decision of the United States Supreme Court dealing with fraud on the Patent Office.

Why does Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co. matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co.?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co..