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Mackay Radio v. Radio Corporation [306 U.S. 86, 1939]
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[DESCRIPTION] {1} The properties of any given material are many and diverse. The antithetical qualities of rigidity and flexibility of a structure are not absolute but relative; it may be more rigid than some and more flexible than others; too rigid for some purposes and too flexible for others. The one quality may be increased and the other diminished by choice of materials from which the structure is made and by variation in its proportions. If invention depends on emphasis of one quality over the other, as the court below found was the case with the laterally flexible webs in the Gulick devise, the statute requires that emphasis to be revealed to the members of the public, who are entitled to know what invention is claimed. That is not accomplished either by naming a member having inherent antithetical properties or by ascribing to it one property when the other is meant. Since rigidity is a relative term, the characterization of the structure as rigid must be taken as emphasizing rigidity rather than its opposite, flexibility, with special reference to the conditions to be encountered in the operation of the piston.
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