Source: https://www.martindale.com/intellectual-property-law/article_Foley-Lardner-LLP_1584438.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 04:49:55+00:00

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In Loughlin v. Ling, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences that had canceled the sole claim of Loughlin’s patent in an interference proceeding. The decision turned on the interplay between the interference statute of limitations (35 USC § 135(b)(2)) and the domestic priority statute (35 USC § 120).
Loughlin’s patent (U.S. 7,434,426) was filed on May 13, 2004 and prosecuted under application no. 10/845,624. The ’624 application was published on November 18, 2004. After several years of pendency, claim 42 was allowed and the patent issued October 14, 2008 with that single claim.
Ling’s application (11/671,404) was filed on February 5, 2007, and claimed priority under 35 USC § 120 to application no. 10/759,413, filed on January 16, 2004. Coincidentally, Ling’s parent application was published on the same day as Loughlin’s application, due to their similar foreign and domestic priority claims.
On February 21, 2007, while Loughlin’s application was pending but more than one year after it had published, Ling copied claims from Loughlin’s application into the ’404 application in order to provoke an interference.
A claim which is the same as, or for the same or substantially the same subject matter as, a claim of an application published under section 122(b) of this title may be made in an application filed after the application is published only if the claim is made before 1 year after the date on which the application is published.
The interfering claim is presented in an application “filed” after the earlier application was published.
The interfering claim is not made until after “1 year after the date on which the [earlier] application [was] published.
Loughlin argued that the ’404 application was filed after Loughlin’s ’624 application was published, and that claim 31 was not added until more than one year after the ’624 application was published.
The board noted that Ling’s ’404 application properly claimed priority to the ’413 application, which was filed before Loughlin’s application was published. The board therefore concluded that the ’404 application is not an application filed after the ’624 application was published, as required under § 135(b)(2). Accordingly, the board found that the statute did not bar Ling from adding claim 31 to provoke the interference.
In view of the board decision, Loughlin requested adverse judgment under 37 CFR § 41.127(b) and appealed to the Federal Circuit. The board entered adverse judgment and canceled the sole claim of the ’426 patent.
The Federal Circuit disagreed, finding that the plain language of § 120 supports a broad application of its provisions, including its application to § 135(b)(2).
Provided the criteria in § 120 are met, applications “shall,” without exception, receive the benefit of the earlier filing date. The statute does not limit its effect to only certain provisions under patent laws.
Indeed, the court noted that § 120 applies to subsections (b), (d) and (e) of § 102, even though those statutory provisions do not include any express reference to § 120. The court also cited a number of board decisions which interpreted the portion of § 135(b)(2) at issue as incorporating the priority benefit provisions of § 120.
The Court therefore affirmed the oard decision that canceled the sole claim of Loughlin’s ’426 patent.
The Federal Circuit arrived at its decision based on its interpretation of 35 USC § 135(b)(2), but the outcome also makes sense in the context of both the current first-to-invent system and the upcoming first-to-file system. Ling’s priority application was filed five months before Loughlin’s application, and constitutes prima facie evidence of an earlier date of invention of the subject matter at issue. Indeed, Loughlin’s decision to request adverse judgment suggests that Loughlin would not have been able to establish an earlier date of invention. On the other hand, Ling escaped the time limit provisions of § 135(b)(2) because the parent application was filed before Loughlin’s application—he was the first inventor to file.

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