Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01574/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01574-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
HTC America, Inc.
Appellee
HTC Corporation
Appellee
Immersion Corporation
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IMMERSION CORPORATION,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

HTC CORPORATION, HTC AMERICA, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees

______________________ 

2015-1574

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Delaware in No. 1:12-cv-00259-TBD, Judge 

Richard G. Andrews & Circuit Judge Timothy B. Dyk (by 

designation). 

______________________ 

Decided: June 21, 2016

______________________ 

JOSEPH R. PALMORE, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by MARC A. HEARRON, BRYAN LEITCH; HAROLD J.

MCELHINNY, San Francisco, CA; MARC DAVID PETERS,

BRYAN J. WILSON, Palo Alto, CA.

DAN L. BAGATELL, Perkins Coie LLP, Phoenix, AZ, argued for defendants-appellees. Also represented by RYAN 

J. MCBRAYER, ERIC MILLER, Seattle, WA; JOHN PETER 

SCHNURER, San Diego, CA.

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2 IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION

BENJAMIN M. SHULTZ, Appellate Staff, Civil Division, 

United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, 

argued for amicus curiae United States. Also represented 

by BENJAMIN C. MIZER, CHARLES M. OBERLY, III, MARK R.

FREEMAN; THOMAS W. KRAUSE, WILLIAM LAMARCA,

FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED, Office of the Solicitor, 

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, 

VA.

GEORGE FRANK PAPPAS, Covington & Burling LLP, 

Washington, DC, for amicus curiae Intellectual Property 

Owners Association. Also represented by PAUL BERMAN,

JOHN ARTHUR KELLY, RANGANATH SUDARSHAN; HERBERT 

CLARE WAMSLEY, JR., Intellectual Property Owners Association, Washington, DC; PHILIP STATON JOHNSON, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ; KEVIN H. RHODES, 

3M Innovative Properties Company, St. Paul, MN.

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, LINN and TARANTO, Circuit 

Judges.

TARANTO, Circuit Judge. 

This case involves one necessary condition, under 35 

U.S.C. § 120, for treating a patent application, filed as a 

continuation of an earlier application, as having the 

earlier application’s filing date, not its own filing date. 

That timing benefit shrinks the universe of “prior” art for 

determining validity. The condition at issue, as relevant 

here, is that the continuation application be “filed before 

the patenting” of the earlier application. The question is 

whether, for that condition to be met, the continuing 

application has to be filed at least one day before the 

earlier application is patented, or whether an application 

may be “filed before the patenting” of the earlier application when both legal acts, filing and patenting, occur on 

the same day.

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IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION 3

We adopt the latter position. The statutory language 

does not compel, though it certainly could support, adoption of a day as the unit of time for deciding if filing is 

“before” patenting. And history is decisive in permitting 

the same-day-continuation result, under which, using 

units of time of less than a day, a “filing” is deemed to 

occur before “patenting.” The Supreme Court approved 

same-day continuations in 1863, and the 1952 Patent Act, 

which introduced section 120, was broadly a codification 

of existing continuation practices. And same-day continuations have been approved by a consistent, clearly 

articulated agency practice going back at least half a 

century, which has plausibly engendered large-scale 

reliance and which reflects the agency’s procedural authority to define when the legal acts of “filing” and “patenting” will be deemed to occur, relative to each other, 

during a day. 

We reverse the district court’s contrary holding and 

remand. Immersion Corp. v. HTC Corp., No. 1:12-cv00259, 2015 WL 627425 (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2015). 

BACKGROUND

On January 19, 2000, Immersion Corporation filed

with the United States Patent and Trademark Office a 

patent application disclosing a mechanism for providing 

haptic feedback to users of electronic devices. On August 

6, 2002, that application issued as U.S. Patent No. 

6,429,846. Meanwhile, Immersion had filed International 

Application No. PCT/US01/01486, and that application 

was published as WO 01/54109 on July 26, 2001. The 

written description of the WO ’109 publication is materially identical to that of the ’846 patent. Under 35 U.S.C. 

§ 102(b) (2006), the WO ’109 publication became invalidating as to claims to subject matter disclosed in that 

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4 IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION

publication unless those claims were entitled to an effective filing date before July 26, 2002.1

Beginning in August 2002, i.e., after the July 2002 

date, Immersion filed in the United States a series of 

applications that similarly shared the written description 

of the ’846 patent and for which Immersion asserted an 

entitlement to an effective filing date of January 19, 2000, 

the filing date of the ’846 patent’s application. Immersion 

invoked 35 U.S.C. § 120, under which, as relevant here,

“[a]n application for patent for an invention [that is]

disclosed” adequately (as specified in certain portions of

35 U.S.C. § 112) 

in an application previously filed in the United 

States . . . shall have the same effect, as to such

invention, as though filed on the date of the prior 

application, if filed before the patenting or abandonment of or termination of proceedings on the 

first application or on an application similarly entitled to the benefit of the filing date of the first 

application. 

35 U.S.C. § 120. It is not disputed here that section 120 

allows multiple links of such “continuation” applications 

in a chain leading back to an earlier application as long as 

each link meets the section’s requirements. 

Here, one link is contested. Immersion filed an application—which eventually matured into U.S. Patent No. 

 

1 The parties in this case have relied on the version 

of § 102(b) that was in effect before the America Invents 

Act amendments to § 102 took effect. See Leahy–Smith 

America Invents Act, Pub. L. No. 112-29, §§ 3(b), 3(n)(1), 

125 Stat. 284, 285–87, 293 (2011). Section 120 also was 

amended in 2011 and 2012, but the language at issue 

here, quoted infra, was not changed. Accordingly, we 

refer simply to 35 U.S.C. § 120 without giving a date. 

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IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION 5

7,148,875—on August 6, 2002, the same day that the ’846 

patent issued. The present dispute is whether the ’875 

patent’s application was “filed before the patenting” of the 

’846 patent’s application and hence is entitled to the 2000 

filing date of the ’846 patent. No other requirement of 

section 120, e.g., an adequate disclosure, is in dispute. 

Later links in the relevant chain are not contested

here. Immersion filed additional applications that the 

parties accept as direct or indirect continuations properly 

tracing back to the ’875 patent’s application, each filed at 

least one day before its predecessor application was 

patented (or, in one instance, abandoned). See HTC Br. at 

5 (patent family tree). That process led to the three 

patents at issue in this appeal, U.S. Patent Nos. 

7,982,720, 8,031,181, and 8,059,105, all of which share a 

written description with the WO ’109 publication.

In early 2012, Immersion sued HTC Corp. and HTC 

America, Inc. (collectively, HTC) for infringing the ’720, 

’181, and ’105 patents (as well as two other patents no 

longer at issue). HTC sought summary judgment that the 

asserted patent claims are invalid under 35 U.S.C. 

§ 102(b) (2006) because the WO ’109 publication of July 

26, 2001, disclosed the subject matter of those claims. 

The decisive issue was the priority date to which the 

patents at issue are entitled based on the chain of applications tracing back to the ’846 patent—specifically, 

whether the link between the ’875 patent’s application 

and the ’846 patent’s application met section 120’s timing 

requirement. 

The district court (Judge Andrews) held that the ’875 

patent’s application was not “filed before the patenting” of 

the ’846 patent’s application within the meaning of section 120, because they were filed on the same day. The 

correctness of that conclusion is the issue before us. It is 

undisputed here that, if that conclusion is correct, the 

patents at issue are not entitled to the ’846 patent’s 

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6 IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION

application’s January 19, 2000 filing date, but only to a 

filing date of August 6, 2002, the actual filing date of the 

’875 patent’s application. It is likewise undisputed that 

the consequence is that the patents are invalid because 

the WO ’109 publication was published more than one 

year before August 6, 2002. Immersion, 2015 WL 627425, 

at *2–4.

Immersion and HTC settled as to the other two patents at issue, as to which the district court (Judge Dyk), 

in entering final judgment, dismissed Immersion’s claims 

with prejudice. The final judgment also ruled in favor of 

HTC as to the ’720, ’181, and ’105 patents, based solely on 

the earlier summary judgment of those patents’ invalidity. Immersion appeals, challenging the district court’s 

interpretation of section 120 as barring a second application from receiving the filing date of a first application 

(even if other section 120 requirements are met) when the 

second application is filed on the same day that the first 

one issues, not the day before or earlier. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1) and review de novo 

the district court’s interpretation of section 120. See 

Belkin Int’l, Inc. v. Kappos, 696 F.3d 1379, 1381 (Fed. Cir. 

2012). 

DISCUSSION

Section 120 provides, in relevant part:

[a]n application for patent for an invention disclosed . . . in an application previously filed in the 

United States . . . shall have the same effect, as to 

such invention, as though filed on the date of the 

prior application, if filed before the patenting or 

abandonment of or termination of proceedings on 

the first application or on an application similarly 

entitled to the benefit of the filing date of the first 

application.

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IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION 7

35 U.S.C. § 120 (emphasis added). Section 120 was 

included in the Patent Act of 1952, and the language 

relevant here has remained materially unaltered since 

then. See Act of July 19, 1952, Pub. L. No. 82-593, § 120, 

66 Stat. 792, 800; Act of November 14, 1975, Pub. L. No.

94-131, § 9, 89 Stat. 685, 691–92; Patent Law Amendments Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-622, § 104(b), 98 Stat. 

3383, 3384–85; Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999, Pub. L. No. 106-113, 

App’x I, § 4503(b), 113 Stat. 1501, 1501A-563–64; Leahy–

Smith America Invents Act, Pub. L. No. 112-29, §§ 3(f), 

15(b), 20(j)(1), 125 Stat. 284, 288, 328, 335 (2011); Patent 

Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012, Pub. L. No.

112-211, §§ 102(5), 202(3), 126 Stat. 1527, 1531, 1536. 

Section 120’s language does not by its terms answer 

the question whether a later-filed application can claim 

the same filing date as an earlier-filed application when 

the later one is filed on the day of the earlier one’s patenting. Section 120’s language requires that the later application be “filed before the patenting” of the earlier. But 

that language does not say that the unit of time is a day, 

as opposed to some smaller unit. As far as that language 

goes, filing can precede patenting on the same day.

The central premise of HTC’s position—that neither 

of two events on the same day can be “before” the other—

is that time under the section 120 language at issue must 

be measured with a “date-level granularity,” i.e., in units

no smaller than a “day.” HTC Br. at 18–19; Oral Arg. at 

21:44–23:00. HTC’s brief relies on that premise from the 

very start, embedding the premise in its foundational 

framing of the issue as whether “‘before’ a statutory 

deadline means ‘before’ that date, not ‘on or before.’” HTC

Br. at 3; id. at 1 (“‘Before’ a statutory deadline means 

before that date, not on or before that date.”). The formulation presupposes the answer in referring to “date[s]” 

and even in using the phrase “on or before”: “on a day” is 

ordinary usage; “on a minute” or “on a moment” or “on a 

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8 IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION

time” is not. And it is only on that presupposition that

the dichotomy between “before” and “on or before” is 

forceful, as it has been precisely in cases involving day 

(equivalently, date) language. See, e.g., United States v. 

Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 90, 96 n.11 (1985); Burton v. Stevedoring Servs. of Am., 196 F.3d 1070, 1073 (9th Cir. 1999); 

Int’l Union, United Mine Workers of Am. v. Mine Safety & 

Health Admin., 900 F.2d 384, 385 (D.C. Cir. 1990). But 

that dichotomy is inapplicable, or at best questionbegging, where the statutory language, as with the phrase 

at issue here, does not actually speak in terms of days or 

dates. Here, quite simply, the language at issue, considered alone, does not resolve the crucial unit-of-time issue. 

We must therefore widen the lens to look beyond the 

specific phrase at issue. That widening immediately 

reveals how pervasively the Patent Act elsewhere, including in other phrases within section 120, specifies time by 

express reference to days, months, or years. See, e.g., 35 

U.S.C. §§ 3(e)(1), 6(d), 21(a), 41(a)(8), 41(b)(2), 100(i), 

111(a)(4), 115(f), 119(a), 120, 154(a)(2), 156(d)(5)(E), 183,

291(b), 321(c); 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (2006); but cf. 35 U.S.C. 

§ 156(d)(1) (other agency’s permission for marketing, if 

transmitted after 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on a day, is 

“deemed” given the next “business day”). But even apart 

from other considerations, the significance of that fact for 

the present issue is not unidirectional. The prevalence of 

date-based usage elsewhere in the statute does not by 

itself determine the meaning of a statutory phrase (like 

the one at issue here) that does not refer to a unit of time: 

differences in text often furnish a reason for differences in 

meaning. 

To be sure, the usage elsewhere in the Act means that 

the particular language of section 120 that is at issue here 

can bear a day-as-unit meaning. That meaning might 

even be the most natural one to adopt—the one that 

would fit best with the statute as a whole—if the statute 

were new and without history, whether pre-enactment or 

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IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION 9

post-enactment. But that is not the posture in which the 

question is presented. We cannot properly disregard the 

history bearing on the interpretive question, and that 

history, we think, is so weighty as to be determinative.

Long before Congress enacted section 120 in the 1952 

Act, the Supreme Court in Godfrey v. Eames, 68 U.S. (1 

Wall.) 317 (1864), established the basis for same-day 

continuations for priority-date purposes. There, Mr. 

Godfrey had withdrawn a previously filed patent application and, on the same day, refiled his application with an 

amended specification. Id. at 324. The Court held that “if 

a party choose to withdraw his application for a patent . . . 

intending at the time of such withdrawal to file a new 

petition, and he accordingly do so, the two petitions are to 

be considered as parts of the same transaction, and both 

as constituting one continuous application, within the 

meaning of the law.” Id. at 325–36. It adopted that 

position for purposes of giving the earlier application’s 

priority date to the successor application (where the two 

were sufficiently related). And in the decades following 

Godfrey, the Supreme Court, other federal courts, and the 

Patent Office consistently followed Godfrey’s rule. See 

Smith v. Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Co., 93 U.S. 486, 

500–01 (1877); Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik v. A. 

Klipstein & Co., 125 F. 543, 554–55 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1903);

Ex parte Kruse, 133 O.G. 229 (Comm’r Pat. 1908); Ex 

parte Miller, 305 O.G. 419, 419–20 (Comm’r Pat. 1922); 

Clark Blade & Razor Co. v. Gillette Safety Razor Co., 194 

F. 421, 422 (3d Cir. 1912); In re Febrey, 135 F.2d 751, 

754–56 (CCPA 1943); Harder v. Hayward, 150 F.2d 256, 

258–60 (CCPA 1945).2 

 

2 When the Patent Office held that a later-filed application could not claim the benefit of an earlier-filed 

application’s filing date if the earlier application had 

already been allowed (even if the patent had not issued), 

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The 1952 Act was the first to put continuation practice fully into statutory text, which it did through section 

120.3 The Senate report accompanying House Bill 7794, 

82d Cong. (1952), describes section 120 as written to 

“express in the statute certain matters which exist[ed] in 

the law [up to that point] but which had not before been 

written into the statute, and in so doing make some minor 

changes in the concepts involved,” and also to “represent[ ] [then-]present law not expressed in the statute, 

except for the added requirement that the first application must be specifically mentioned in the second,” S. Rep. 

No. 82-1979, at 6, 20 (1952); see also H.R. Rep. No. 82-

1923, at 7, 20 (1952) (same); Transco Prods. Inc. v. Performance Contracting, Inc., 38 F.3d 551, 556 (Fed. Cir. 

1994). Accordingly, “the practice prior to the 1952 Act is 

pertinent.” In re Henriksen, 399 F.2d 253, 258 (CCPA 

1968). None of the legislative history or contemporaneous 

commentary indicates an intent to alter Godfrey’s longestablished result approving same-day continuations for 

priority-date purposes. And adjudicatory reliance on 

Godfrey continued after 1952. Ex parte Ziherl & Kish, 

116 U.S.P.Q. 162, 166 (Pat. Off. Bd. App. 1957); Hovlid v. 

Asari, 305 F.2d 747, 748 (9th Cir. 1962); Clover Club 

Foods Co. v. Gottschalk, 178 U.S.P.Q. 505, 506–07 (C.D. 

Cal. 1973).

 

see In re Application filed April 17, 1940, 51 U.S.P.Q. 80 

(Comm’r Pat. 1941); In re Application filed July 10, 1940, 

49 U.S.P.Q. 566 (Comm’r Pat. 1941), our predecessor 

court rejected that position, see Harder, 150 F.2d at 258–

60; In re Febrey, 135 F.2d at 754–56. 

3 An issue involving the filing of a new application 

by an applicant that had failed to pay a fee after allowance was addressed for a time in R.S. § 4897, which was 

repealed in 1939. See In re Febrey, 135 F.2d at 753–57.

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Soon after the 1952 Act’s enactment, the PTO promulgated 37 C.F.R. § 1.78(a) (1960), stating that “the benefit of the filing date of [a] prior application” can be 

obtained when “an applicant files an application claiming 

an invention disclosed in a prior filed copending application.” (Emphasis added.) That word on its face would 

naturally include, not exclude, the same-day situation, 

and in any event, the word’s prior usage makes that 

understanding clear. “Copending” had regularly been 

used in the field to describe the relationship between an 

earlier-filed application and its later-filed continuation, 

often with reference to Godfrey, which involved the sameday situation. See McBride v. Teeple, 109 F.2d 789, 797 

(CCPA 1940); Febrey, 135 F.2d at 754–57; Baker v. Alther, 

149 F.2d 942, 944 (CCPA 1945); Harder, 150 F.2d at 257;

In re Coleman, 189 F.2d 976, 978 (CCPA 1951); 2 Anthony 

William Deller, Walker on Patents § 184, at 874 (1937); 

P.J. Frederico, Commentary on the New Patent Act, 35 

U.S.C.A. (1954), reprinted in 75 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. 

Soc’y 161, 192–93 (1993); see also Lincoln B. Smith, 

Continuing Applications, 10 J. Pat. Off. Soc’y 105, 107, 

110 (1927) (describing “[t]he law as deduced from Godfrey” as “a later copending application . . . is a ‘continuing’ 

application . . . and [is] entitled to the filing date of the 

earlier [application],” and listing 30 court and PTO decisions applying Godfrey). 

Not surprisingly, then, the agency soon went beyond 

the term “copending” (with its Godfrey-based meaning) to 

be more explicit about the same-day situation. Although

an early edition of the Manual of Patent Examining 

Procedure defined “copending” by simply echoing section 

120’s language, MPEP § 201.11 (2d ed. 1953), every later 

edition of the MPEP, beginning in 1961, specifically 

notified the public of the agency practice concerning 

same-day filing and patenting: “If the first application 

issues as a patent, it is sufficient for the second application to be copending with it if the second application is 

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filed on the same day or before the patenting of the first 

application.” MPEP § 201.11 (3d ed. 1961) (emphases 

added). And even as 37 C.F.R. § 1.78 has been amended, 

and the MPEP revised over the decades, the agency has 

consistently maintained its clearly stated position for half 

a century now. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.78(d) (2015) (“An applicant in a nonprovisional application . . . may claim the 

benefit of one or more prior-filed copending nonprovisional applications . . . under the conditions set forth in 35 

U.S.C. § 120 . . . and this section.”) (emphasis added); 

MPEP § 211.01(b) (9th ed. 2014) (“If the prior application 

issues as a patent, it is sufficient for the later-filed application to be copending with it if the later-filed application 

is filed on the same date, or before the date that the patent 

issues on the prior application.”) (emphases added). 

The Supreme Court has long recognized that a 

“longstanding administrative construction,” at least one 

on which reliance has been placed, provides a powerful 

reason for interpreting a statute to support the construction. Zenith Radio Corp. v. United States, 437 U.S. 443, 

457–58 (1978); see McLaren v. Fleischer, 256 U.S. 477, 481 

(1921). The Court has emphasized the weight of this 

consideration in patent law in particular. WarnerJenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chem. Co., 520 U.S. 17, 32 

(1997); see Ariad Pharm., Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 

1336, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc). Investment-backed 

expectations and reliance interests in patent law are often 

strong. Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki 

Co., 535 U.S. 722, 739 (2002); see Kimble v. Marvel 

Entm’t, LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2401, 2410 (2015). 

Here, HTC’s position would disturb over 50 years of 

public and agency reliance on the permissibility of sameday continuations. Several patents claiming effective 

filing dates in reliance on the PTO’s articulated position 

have been the subject of litigation in the recent past. See 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. v. Alpine Elecs. of Am., 

Inc., 609 F.3d 1345, 1349, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2010); Ultratec, 

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Inc. v. Sorensen Commc’ns, Inc., 45 F. Supp. 3d 881, 910 

(W.D. Wis. 2014); MOAEC, Inc. v. MusicIP Corp., 568 F. 

Supp. 2d 978, 980–82 (W.D. Wis. 2008); Merch. Techs., 

Inc. v. Telefonix, Inc., No. 05-CV-1195, 2007 WL 464710, 

at *1 (D. Or. Feb. 7, 2007); A & E Prods. Grp., L.P. v. 

Mainetti USA Inc., No. 01 Civ. 10820, 2004 WL 345841, at 

*1 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 25, 2004). As far as we are aware, until 

this case, the only square rulings on the issue upheld the 

same-day-continuation position (rulings issued in two 

cases by the same judge). Ultratec, 45 F. Supp. 3d at 910; 

MOAEC, 568 F. Supp. 2d at 980–82. 

Even as to patents currently in force, according to the 

government’s calculations and studies commissioned by 

amicus Intellectual Property Owners Association, overturning the PTO’s position would affect the priority dates 

of more than ten thousand patents. U.S. Br. at 29–30; 

Intellectual Property Owners Association Br. at 13–14. 

For those and decades of earlier patents, it is plausible 

that applicants relied on the policy approving same-day 

continuations in at least two ways. First, in the PTO, 

applicants have likely relied on the policy in deciding 

when to file their continuations; the PTO provides notice 

of the expected issuance date of the (soon-to-be) parent 

application, U.S. Br. 30 n.5, and we are informed that 

such notice is pretty reliable as to an earliest date of 

issuance, see Oral Arg. at 11:57–12:42. Applicants’ reliance on the PTO position in timing their filing of continuations need not reflect the safest of lawyerly practices to 

be given weight. Second, after such same-day continuations issued as patents, the patentees plausibly made 

investments based on assessments of validity using the 

earlier priority dates. We see no basis for denying the 

existence of a facially large disruptive effect were we now 

to repudiate the same-day-continuation policy. 

In short, the repeated, consistent pre-1952 and post1952 judicial and agency interpretations, in this area of 

evident public reliance, provide a powerful reason to read 

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section 120 to preserve, not upset, the established position. And the conclusion is reinforced by the fact that 

Congress has done nothing to disapprove of this clearly 

articulated position despite having amended section 120 

several times since its first enactment in 1952. Sebelius 

v. Auburn Reg’l Med. Ctr., 133 S. Ct. 817, 827 (2013); 

Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 

833, 846 (1986); Nat’l Labor Relations Bd. v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 274–75 (1974). 

This is not a case, as we have explained, where the 

language of the statute actually contradicts the 

longstanding judicial and agency interpretation. Nor is it 

a case in which the longstanding agency position is plainly outside the agency’s granted authority. Here, the 

position is an essentially procedural one establishing 

when the agency will consider an input into its process 

(the legal act of “filing”) and an output of its process (the 

legal act of “patenting”) to occur relative to each other—

neither one being a precisely identifiable self-defining 

physical act, but a legally defined event. Similar “deeming” determinations in the federal courts, e.g., Fed. R. 

App. P. 4(a)(2), 4(a)(7)(A)(ii), 25(a)(2)(A) & (B), have long 

been treated as non-substantive, procedural matters 

under the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2072. See

Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460, 463–65 (1965) (methods 

of serving process to initiate litigation). The PTO has 

been granted authority to establish procedures that 

organize its processing of requests to issue (or cancel) 

patents, from entry to exit. See 35 U.S.C. § 2; Cooper 

Techs. Co. v. Dudas, 536 F.3d 1330, 1336–38 (Fed. Cir. 

2008); Lacavera v. Dudas, 441 F.3d 1380, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 

2006); In re Sullivan, 362 F.3d 1324, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 

2004); see also Tafas v. Doll, 559 F.3d 1345, 1352–53 (Fed. 

Cir. 2009), vacated, 328 F. App’x 658 (Fed. Cir. 2009); id.

at 1365 (Bryson, J., concurring). 

Two final points. First, HTC makes no meaningful 

argument for overturning the same-day-continuation 

Case: 15-1574 Document: 77-2 Page: 14 Filed: 06/21/2016
IMMERSION CORPORATION v. HTC CORPORATION 15

practice independent of its argument that the section 120 

phrase at issue must be read as using a “day” as the unit 

of time for determining beforeness. Indeed, once we 

conclude that the phrase permits consideration of whether 

filing was before patenting within a single day, any 

argument against same-day continuations runs into 

insuperable difficulties, given Godfrey and the PTO’s 

authority, supported by obvious practical considerations, 

to declare when the events of “filing” and “patenting” are 

deemed to occur within the same day. Second, we have no 

occasion to address the questions that would arise if the 

PTO now changed its longstanding policy on same-day 

continuations.

CONCLUSION

The judgment of the district court as to the ’720, ’181, 

and ’105 patents is reversed and remanded. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED

Case: 15-1574 Document: 77-2 Page: 15 Filed: 06/21/2016