The Supreme Court rejected Drawbaugh's claim of prior inventorship in 1888 by a narrow margin of four votes to three. Similar disputes have raged over who invented the automobile, the electric light and the laser and, in all of them, records or the lack thereof played a deciding role. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office conducts proceedings, called interference proceedings, to determine who is the first inventor when this is in dispute. Because the first inventor must be able to prove his or her case by means of appropriate evidence, it is important to have good records of conception and reduction to practice, corroborated by witnesses other than inventors. Equally important to the U.S. Patent Office in such proceedings is the diligence shown by a contending inventor.
Diligence refers to work done between the conception and reduction to practice stages of invention.
A contending inventor must show work was diligently undertaken on the invention, i.e., the invention was not abandoned. Conclusion Proper record keeping is important for research. It is best for a laboratory to incorporate the rules described in this handout into their standard operating procedures. Also, all new technicians and graduate students should be issued their own laboratory notebook, with instructions on how to record in them. Each page of the notebook should be used.