JAMES LEWIS KRAFT Vs. OLIVER KENNETH MCANULTY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is from a decision of the High Court of Australia given on 17 March 1930, whereby the decision of Henchman, J., of the Supreme Court of Queensland, given on 29 August 1929, was reversed. The action was commenced by writ dated 2nd June, 1928, and was brought by James Lewis Kraft, the grantee and registered legal owner of Letters Patent for the Commonwealth of Australia, numbered 1620 of 1916, in respect of a "Process of sterilizing cheese and an improved product produced by such process," dated 26th July 1916 for an injunction to restrain the defendant, his servants and agents from infringing the patent by manufacturing or selling, or offering for sale cheese manufactured in accordance with the specification of the plaintiffs' patent and the usual consequential relief.

(2.) The plaintiffs, the Kraft Cheese Company (Incorporated), is a company incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois, U.S.A., and is the unregistered assignee of the letters patent from James Lewis Kraft, and the beneficial owner of the patent. The other plaintiff company is a company duly incorporated in the State of Victoria and is the grantee of an unregistered exclusive licence dated 17 May 1926, from the Kraft Cheese Company (Incorporated) to manufacture cheese in accordance with the specification of the Letters Patent.

(3.) The defendant who is the respondent to this appeal, denied infringement and alleged that the patent was invalid on various grounds. The grounds which ultimately raised the contest between the parties were want of subject-matter, want of utility, and that the specification was ambiguous and misleading in that: (1) it is not possible by following out the directions contained in it to achieve the alleged result; (2) the claims were ambiguous and did not sufficiently define the monopoly that the patentee intended to claim.