Source: https://b-ok.org/book/2927115/728322
Timestamp: 2019-12-13 02:54:50
Document Index: 77129576

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 15', '§ 15', 'art.13', '§ 15', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 135', '§ 102', '§ 104', '§ 104', '§ 119', '§ 104', '§ 104', '§ 104', '§ 104', '§ 104', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 104', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 104', '§ 102', '§ 104', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 16', '§ 104', '§ 119', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 104']

Intellectual Property: The Law of Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks | Roger Schechter, John Thomas | download
Main Intellectual Property: The Law of Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks
ISBN 10: 0314065997
ISBN 13: 9780314065995
patent2034
trademark1313
infringement919
invention653
cir618
registration546
defendant533
statute519
plaintiff504
pto412
trademarks342
patents342
corp301
federal circuit278
inventor271
dilution265
filing244
lanham act240
applicant236
statutory227
filed216
patented215
unfair competition212
2d cir209
copying189
inventors188
provision184
patent law184
infringing176
restatement174
patentee164
cert162
inventions162
damages151
equivalents148
berne146
infringer142
nonobviousness141
patent application140
prosecution137
litigation135
liability133
distinctiveness130
descriptive128
likelihood of confusion126
parody120
copyrighted119
9th cir114
renewal112
Quentin Meillassoux, Isaac Asimov
Creating Imaginary Worlds: The 12 Rules
15.1  Basic Concepts.
15.2  Immoral, Fraudulent and Incredible Inventions.
15.3  Utility in Chemistry and Biotechnology.
§ 15.1  Basic Concepts
Section 101 of the Patent Act mandates that patents issue only to “useful” inventions. Utility ordinarily presents a minimal requirement that the invention be capable of achieving a pragmatic result.1 Patent applicants need only supply a single, operable use of the invention that is credible to persons of ordinary skill in the art. Although the utility requirement is readily met in most fields, it presents a more significant obstacle to patentability in the disciplines of chemistry and biotechnology. In these fields, inventors sometimes synthesize compounds without a precise knowledge of how they may be used to achieve a practical working result. When patent applications are filed claiming such compounds, they may be rejected as lacking utility within the meaning of the patent law.
As demonstrated by Justice Story’s 1817 instructions to the jury in Lowell v. Lewis2 and Bedford v. Hunt,3 the notion of utility is a longstanding feature of United States patent law. In Lowell, Justice Story remarked:
All that the law requires is, that the invention should not be frivolous or injurious to the well-being, good policy, or sound morals of society. The word “useful”, therefore, is incorporated 316into the act in contradistinction to mischievous or immoral. … But if the invention steers wide of these objections, whether it be more or less useful is a circumstance very material to the interest of the patentee, but of no importance to the public. If it be not extensively useful, it will silently sink into contempt and disregard.
Under Justice Story’s view, the utility requirement does not provide a significant place for technology assessment. Outside of the most narrow limits, valuation of the invention is left to the market rather than to the mechanisms of the patent law.
Justice Story’s jury instructions also explain that the utility requirement does not mandate that the invention be superior to existing products and processes in order to qualify for a patent. The utility standard reflects the judgment that society is better served by access to a library of issued patents describing as many inventions as possible, even if many of them do not achieve better results than public domain technology. This liberal view of utility allows subsequent inventors access to a greater variety of previous technologies, some of which may yet be judged the superior solution when employed within a different context.4
§ 15.2  Immoral, Fraudulent and Incredible Inventions
Historically, courts employed the utility requirement to strike down patents concerning inventions that were judged to be immoral or fraudulent. A handful of early decisions invalidated patents on inventions intended for use in gambling or other disfavored activities. Most of these dour opinions originated in the nineteenth century or the early part of the twentieth. A patented toy automatic race course,5 lottery devices6 and a slot machine7 were among those held to lack utility because their functions were judged unwholesome. Inventions that were designed to mislead consumers were similarly invalidated. Among this latter class of inventions was a patented process for causing lower quality tobacco to simulate high-quality tobacco by artificially causing spots to form on the leaf. In stern, scolding language, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit believed the sole purpose of the invention was to practice deception and fraud upon the public.8
The modern view is that so long as the invention may be put to a single lawful use, it possesses utility within the patent statute. That the invention might also be put to an illegal purpose does not make it 317unpatentable. This position recognizes that public mores are susceptible to change, and that once reviled race tracks, lotteries and birth control devices have moved from a position of illegality to one of widespread adoption by the state and members of the public. It also avoids subjective judicial judgments as to the moral worth of a particular technology.9
Similarly, inventions that allow manufacturers to make cheaper substitutes for more expensive products are now judged to possess utility. Representative of the contemporary position is the Federal Circuit opinion in Juicy Whip, Inc. v. Orange Bang, Inc.10 The reader of this opinion learns much about beverage displays in shopping mall food courts. It seems that so-called “post-mix” dispensers maintain beverage syrup concentrate and water in separate locations, only combining the two ingredients immediately before the beverage is dispensed. While post-mix dispensers have a large capacity and are quite sanitary, they do not allow vendors to promote impulse purchases by displaying a frothing, succulent beverage for all to see. In contrast, “pre-mix” dispensers hold a combination of syrup concentrate and water at the ready, but suffer from limited storage capacity and are prone to bacterial contamination.
The plaintiff, Juicy Whip, held a patent concerning a post-mix dispenser that included a transparent bowl. According to the patent, the bowl was filled with a liquid that appeared to be the beverage available for purchase. While the bowl was arranged in such a way that it seemed to be the source of the beverage, in fact no fluid connection existed between the bowl and the beverage dispenser at all. Instead, the beverage was mixed on the fly, immediately prior to each beverage sale. The district court struck Juicy Whip’s patent on the ground of lack of utility, reasoning that the patented invention acted only to deceive consumers. The court stated that the purpose of the invention “was to create an illusion, whereby customers believe that the fluid contained in the bowl is the actual beverage they are receiving, when of course it is not.”
The Federal Circuit reversed on appeal, concluding that the fact that one product can be altered to make it look like another is, in itself, a specific benefit sufficient to satisfy the statutory requirement of utility. The appeals court noted that many valued products, ranging from cubic zirconium to synthetic fabrics, are designed to appear as something that they are not. Because the claimed post-mix dispenser possessed the features of a post-mix dispenser while imitating the visual appearance of a pre-mix dispenser, the utility requirement was met. The Federal Circuit also noted that simply because some customers might believe they are receiving fluid directly from the display tank did not defeat utility. The utility requirement did not direct the PTO or the courts to resolve issues of deceptive trade practices, which were left to such agencies as the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration.
As a result, in most technical fields the utility requirement is employed merely to sift out utterly incredible inventions from the domain of patentability. Citing the utility requirement, the PTO has disallowed patents on such wonders as a perpetual motion machine11 or a method of slowing the aging process.12 The PTO has also issued Utility Guidelines for use by its examiners. The guidelines explain that an invention fulfills the utility requirement if it has a well-established use in the art or the applicant has disclosed a specific utility that is credible to a person of ordinary skill in the art.13
§ 15.3  Utility in Chemistry and Biotechnology
In modern practice, the utility requirement most often comes into play in the fields of chemistry and biotechnology. In these disciplines, inventors often synthesize a new compound, or a method of making a new compound, without a preexisting knowledge of a particular use for that compound. They may generate the compounds based on their knowledge of the behavior of related compounds, or may wish to explore a class of compounds for which some application may develop in the future. However, at the time the inventor generates the compound, no precise knowledge of the compound’s utility is known.
The utility requirement should be viewed in light of the considerable incentives chemists and biotechnicians possess to obtain patent protection on compounds of interest as soon as possible. For example, in the case of pharmaceutical compounds, food and drug authorities require considerable product testing before the pharmaceutical can be broadly marketed. Before investing further time and effort on laboratory testing and clinical trials, actors in the pharmaceutical field desire to obtain patent rights on promising compounds even where their particular properties are, as yet, not well understood. But when patent applications are filed too close to the laboratory bench, chemists and biotechnicians have discovered that the ordinarily dormant utility requirement has posed considerable obstacles.
The Supreme Court opinion in Brenner v. Manson addressed such a situation.14 The inventor Manson filed a patent application claiming a method of making a known steroid compound. Although the particular compound Manson was concerned with was already known to the art, chemists had yet to identify any setting in which it could be gainfully employed. However, as skilled artisans knew that another steroid with a very similar structure had tumor-inhibiting effects in mice, Manson’s new method of making the compound was a research tool of interest to the scientific community.
The PTO Board of Appeals affirmed the examiner’s rejection of the application. The Board reasoned that because Manson could not identify a single use for the steroid he produced, the utility requirement was not satisfied. The Board was unimpressed that a similar compound did have beneficial effects, noting that in the unpredictable art of steroid chemistry, even minor changes in chemical structure often lead to significant and unforeseeable changes in the performance of the compound. Manson then appealed to the CCPA, which reversed. Key to the CCPA’s reasoning was that the sequence of process steps claimed by Manson would produce the steroid of interest. According to the CCPA, because the claimed process worked to produce a compound, the utility requirement was satisfied.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari and once more reversed. The Court took issue with Justice Story’s understanding that the utility requirement is fulfilled so long as the claimed invention is not socially undesirable. At least within the context of scientific research tools, the Court imposed a requirement that an invention may not be patentable until it has been developed to a point where “specific benefit exists in currently available form.” Chief among the Court’s concerns was the breadth of the proprietary interest that could result from claims such as those in Manson’s application. “Until the process claim has been reduced to production of a product shown to be useful, the metes and bounds of that monopoly are not capable of precise delineation…. Such a patent may confer power to block whole areas of scientific development, without compensating benefit to the public.” The Court closed by noting that “a patent is not a hunting license. It is not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion. ‘A patent system must be related to the world of commerce rather than to the realm of philosophy.’ ”
The merits of Brenner v. Manson have been roundly debated. As noted by Justice Harlan in dissent, patented products and processes often are later found to possess additional, more valuable uses. In such cases advance knowledge of one particular use does not somehow restrain the patentee’s proprietary interest in those additional applications. For example, the chemical compound nitroglycerine, originally developed as an explosive, was later found to be useful as a heart medication. If an inventor had obtained a patent on the nitroglycerine compound itself, then he would continue to possess a proprietary interest in that compound no matter what applications were discovered for it. Indeed, whether characterized as a basic research tool or an applied technology, any invention potentially serves as the basis for later developments.
That the influence of Brenner v. Manson may be waning is suggested by the leading Federal Circuit opinion on utility, In re Brana.15 Like Manson, Brana claimed chemical compounds and stated they were useful as antitumor substances. The scientific community knew that structurally 320similar compounds had shown antitumor activity during both in vitro testing, done in the laboratory using tissue samples, and in vivo testing using mice as test subjects. The latter tests had been conducted using cell lines known to cause lymphocytic tumors in mice.
The PTO Board rejected the application for lack of utility, and on appeal the Federal Circuit reversed. Among the objections of the PTO was that the tests cited by Brana were conducted upon lymphomas induced in laboratory animals, rather than real diseases. The Federal Circuit responded that an inventor need not wait until an animal or human develops a disease naturally before finding a cure. The PTO further protested that Brana cited no clinical testing, and therefore had no proof of actual treatment of the disease in live animals. The Federal Circuit countered that proof of utility did not demand tests for the full safety and effectiveness of the compound, but only acceptable evidence of medical effects in a standard experimental animal.
Incredibly, the Brana opinion fails to discuss or even cite Brenner v. Manson. This lapse certainly suggests that the Federal Circuit will adopt a more liberal approach to the utility requirement than the Supreme Court did in Brenner v. Manson. The Federal Circuit did indicate that, in cases where the invention lacks a well-established use in the art, the applicant must disclose a specific, credible use within the patent’s specification. Beyond this minimal statement, however, neither tribunal has set forth a statement of the utility standard notable for its clarity. The extent to which a particular chemical or pharmaceutical inventions will suffice to fulfill the utility requirement remains a matter to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
While Brenner v. Manson and Brana continue to generate heated discussion, the PTO has struggled to apply the utility requirement in the context of applications claiming genetic materials. Inventors often seek patent protection on biological compounds soon after they have been synthesized. Such compounds include complementary DNA (“cDNA”), which corresponds to proteins used by human cells, and expressed sequence tags (“ESTs”), DNA sequences that correspond to a small portion of each cDNA. Because this nascent field is highly unpredictable, the functions of cDNA fragments and ESTs are usually unknown at the time they are discovered. Yet they remain extraordinarily valuable for their potential uses, and scientists from private industry, government facilities and university laboratories alike have marketed these research tools for commercial sale.
The patentability of these genetic materials has proven controversial. While Brenner v. Manson holds that serious scientific interest alone does not fulfill the utility requirement, Brana and other Federal Circuit opinions suggest a more lenient posture. Some legal and scientific commentators have expressed concern that proprietary interests in scientific knowledge will impede research efforts overall. They have also suggested that inventors of cDNA sequences and ESTs seek an overly broad scope of patent protection, out of proportion with their relatively 321modest technical achievements. Others have urged that originators of cDNA sequences, like other inventors, also require a return on investment, and that allowing patents only on final products would merely further industry concentration.16 Both the patent bar and the scientific community await judicial resolution of the legal protectability of these crucial technologies, a decision that will undoubtedly compel a further unpacking of the precise scope of the patent law’s utility requirement.
1.  Mitchell v. Tilghman, 86 U.S. (19 Wall.) 287, 396, 22 L.Ed. 125 (1873).
2.  15 F.Cas. 1018, 1019 (No. 8568) (C.C.D.Mass.1817).
3.  3 F.Cas. 37 (No. 1217) (C.C.D.Mass.1817).
4.  Vornado Air Circulation Systems Inc. v. Duracraft Corp., 58 F.3d 1498, 1508 (10th Cir.1995).
5.  National Automatic Device Co. v. Lloyd, 40 F. 89 (N.D.Ill.1889).
6.  Brewer v. Lichtenstein, 278 F. 512 (7th Cir.1922).
7.  Schultze v. Holtz, 82 F. 448 (N.D.Cal.1897).
8.  Richard v. Du Bon, 103 F. 868, 873 (2d Cir.1900).
9.  See ROBERT A. CHOATE ET AL., CASES AND MATERIALS ON PATENT LAW 375–76 (3d ed. 1987).
10.  185 F.3d 1364 (Fed.Cir.1999).
11.  Newman v. Quigg, 877 F.2d 1575, 11 USPQ2d 1340 (Fed.Cir.1989).
12.  Ex parte Heicklen, 16 USPQ2d 1463 (BPAI 1990).
13.  64 Fed. Reg. 71440 (Dec. 21, 1999).
14.  383 U.S. 519, 86 S.Ct. 1033, 16 L.Ed.2d 69 (1966).
15.  51 F.3d 1560, 34 USPQ2d 1436 (Fed.Cir.1995).
16.  See generally Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Intellectual Property at the Public–Private Divide: The Case of Large–Scale DNA Sequencing, 3 U. CHI. L. SCH. ROUNDTABLE 557, 560 (1996).
16.1  Introduction.
16.2  Prior Art for Novelty: The Statutory Bars.
16.2.1  Introduction to § 102(b).
16.2.2  “Public Use” Under § 102(b).
16.2.3  “On Sale” Under § 102(b).
16.2.4  Experimental Use.
16.2.5  Patents, Printed Publications and “In This Country”.
16.2.5.1  “Patented”.
16.2.5.2  Printed Publications.
16.2.5.3  “In this Country”.
16.2.6  Abandonment Under § 102(c).
16.2.7  Delayed United States Filing Under § 102(d).
16.3  Prior Art for Novelty: Prior Invention.
16.3.1  Prior Invention Under § 102(a).
16.3.2  Priority and Prior Art Under § 102(g).
16.3.2.1  Patent Interference Practice.
16.3.2.2  Inventive Activity in Foreign Countries.
16.3.2.3  Conception.
16.3.2.4  Reduction to Practice.
16.3.2.5  Diligence.
16.3.2.6  Corroboration.
16.3.2.7  Patent Award to the Second Inventor.
16.3.2.8  First Inventor Defense.
16.3.3  Disclosure in U.S. Patent Applications Under § 102(e).
16.3.4  Derivation Under § 102(f).
16.4  The Novelty Standard.
16.4.1  The Strict Identity Requirement.
16.4.2  The Enablement Requirement.
16.4.3  Inherency and Accidental Anticipation.
§ 16.1  Introduction
Novelty presents the core value of the patent system. To obtain the proprietary rights granted by the patent system, an inventor must create something new. There are at least two important policy bases for demanding novelty as a prerequisite for a patent. First, the novelty standard preserves the public domain by denying patents to already existing technology. Patentees may not appropriate what others have justly regarded to be free of proprietary interest.1 Second, the novelty standard promotes efficiency, by discouraging technologists from engaging in duplicative development efforts. Cognizant that they may obtain patent rights only when they advance the state of the art, researchers will be motivated to turn first to libraries, not laboratories, in order to gain needed technology.2
A determination of novelty requires two distinct inquiries. First, the current state of technology must be assessed as a basis for comparison. This step requires a determination of which sources from the universe of available knowledge are pertinent to the novelty inquiry. The Patent Act defines the materials—usually called “references”—that may be used to judge the novelty of the claimed invention in § 102. Typical references under § 102 include such documentary materials as patents and publications, as well as evidence of actual uses or sales of a technology within the United States. The sum of these references is denominated the “prior art.”
Making one’s way through § 102 is not an easy task. The authors of this complex statute cobbled it together by augmenting the often dated language of venerable predecessor statutes with summaries of considerably nuanced case law. This drafting effort proved difficult even for the leading experts of the day. Furthermore, the statute cannot be read in isolation from the array of judicial precedent that has interpreted nearly each of its words. The Long March through § 102 will be appreciably assisted, however, by considering the subsections of the provision in two groups. Paragraphs (a), (e), (f) and (g) deal directly with novelty, while paragraphs (b), (c) and (d) deal with a related, but distinct problem known as “statutory bar.” The novelty provisions deal with events that occurred prior to the date the applicant claims to have invented the alleged patentable technology. The statutory bar provisions, by contrast, deal with events that occurred prior to the date an applicant filed her patent application. A closer look will help make this distinction more vivid.
The reason for the distinctions is that inventors do not always file for patents immediately upon conceptualizing their invention. They may delay for a wide variety of reasons. Thus an inventor may invent 324something in May, 2000, but not file for a patent until October, 2002. Events that occur prior to May 2000 are those that can defeat novelty—they predate the invention. Those events that occur before October, 2002 are those that can give rise to a statutory bar. Either type of problem will result in a denial of the patent application, but the logic differs.
As noted, the statutory bars are tied to the date the inventor filed an application at the PTO. In practice, § 102(b) is the primary source of a statutory bar. Under § 102(b), the point in time one year prior to the filing date is termed the “critical date,” and statutorily specified activities, such as publications or sales, act to bar, or prevent, the acquisition of a patent if they occur before that time. The one-year period generated by § 102(b) is commonly termed the “grace period.” Section 102(d) also creates a statutory bar if the U.S. application has not been filed within one year of a foreign application on the same invention where the foreign application ultimately matured into a granted patent. Lastly, § 102(c) offers a broadly stated, if little used, provision denying patentability when the invention has been abandoned to the public. Each of these provisions is treated in more detail in § 16.2 of this Chapter.
The novelty provisions mandate that one who is not the first inventor of a technology cannot obtain a patent, regardless of when or even whether another application has been filed. Crucial to this set of provisions is the invention date. Sections 102(a) and (g) implement the first-to-invent rule by declaring public knowledge of an earlier invention to be a form of prior art. Section 102(g) also serves as the basis for the PTO priority contests known as interferences, which determine who among several competing inventors should be entitled to a patent. Section 102(e) deals with a special category of secret knowledge of an earlier inventor’s work: a patent application, filed by another prior to the invention date, which has actually matured into a granted patent, and discloses but does not claim the invention. Section 102(f) prevents a patent from issuing to an applicant who did not himself invent the claimed invention. The novelty provisions of § 102 are discussed in § 16.3 of this Chapter.
Once we have identified all possible references that might give rise to novelty or statutory bar issues, the second determination is whether any of those references actually anticipates a claim. The standard of anticipation is a strict one. Each and every element of the claimed invention must be disclosed in a single, enabling reference. These issues are considered in § 16.4 of this Chapter.
It should be noted here that the novelty standard is not the only one based upon the prior art. Novelty is complemented by the requisite of nonobviousness. Not only must a patentable invention not be strictly anticipated by a single reference, it must not have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time it was made. In practice, novelty presents the first stage of a prior art-based analysis, with nonobviousness conducted next. Nonobviousness will be taken up in Chapter Seventeen of this book.
Regrettably, the world’s patent laws do not exhibit a great deal of uniformity in their definitions of the prior art. The United States in particular has gone its own way by maintaining a unique “first-to-invent” system. In the United States, when more than one patent application is filed claiming the same invention, the patent will be awarded to the applicant who establishes the earliest acts of invention. Other countries have opted for a “first-to-file” rule under which entitlement to a patent is established by the earliest effective filing date of a patent application. Although inventors around the world have long maligned the interface problems created by the first-to-invent system, the United States has yet to muster the political will to harmonize its patent law with global norms.3
§ 16.2  Prior Art for Novelty: The Statutory Bars
16.2.1  Introduction to § 102(b)
Because they are fundamental to all patent systems, the statutory bar provisions of the Patent Act are an appropriate starting point. Of the three statutory bars, § 102(b) is by far the most frequently employed. Section 102(b) denies a patent where “the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.” The statute focuses attention on the so-called “critical date,” set to one year before the date the patent application was filed. Section 102(b) bars patentability where, before the critical date, the invention was in public use or on sale in the United States; or either patented or described in a printed publication anywhere.
Section 102(b) acts in the nature of a statute of limitation. Once inventors publish an article describing the invention, or otherwise engage in activity specified by § 102(b), they must file a patent application at the PTO within one year or forfeit their United States patent rights. Of course, inventors must be concerned with the activities of others as well. Should another individual have also arrived at the same invention, and performed acts specified by § 102(b) prior to the critical date, then the statutory bar is triggered.
The Federal Circuit has identified § 102(b) as serving the following purposes:
First, there is a policy against removing inventions from the public which the public has justifiably come to believe are freely available to all as a consequence of prolonged sales activity. Next, there is a policy favoring prompt and widespread disclosure of new inventions to the public. The inventor is forced to file promptly or risk possible forfeiture of his [patent] rights due 326to prior sales. A third policy is to prevent the inventor from commercially exploiting the exclusivity of his invention substantially beyond the statutorily authorized [20–year] period. The on-sale bar forces the inventor to choose between seeking patent protection promptly following sales activity or taking his chances with his competitors without the benefit of patent protection. The fourth and final identifiable policy is to give the inventor a reasonable amount of time following sales activity (set by statute as 1 year) to determine whether a patent is a worthwhile investment. This benefits the public because it tends to minimize the filing of [patent applications concerning inventions] of only marginal public interest.4
Unhappily, the great patent statutes of the world diverge with regard to the grace period. With its one-year grace period, the United States patent laws stand in juxtaposition to the “absolute novelty” provisions of the European Patent Convention. Under the European regime, disclosure of an invention even one day before the filing date bars patentability.5 The Japanese system lies in between, providing for a six-month period that applies only to inventor activities.6 Under the Japanese patent law, then, disclosure by a third party prior to the filing date acts as a bar. Thus, while pre-filing date activities may not prejudice U.S. patent rights under § 102(b), they may seriously compromise the possibility of obtaining patents abroad.
Opinion differs as to the wisdom of a grace period. Proponents of the grace period urge that because inventors often labor under the “publish or perish” principle, they face pressure to publish their results promptly—often long before a patent application can be drafted and filed. Thus, a grace period comports with the norms of the scientific community and promotes a more prompt disclosure of inventions. It further avoids the prospect of forfeiture, where inventors have inadvertently published descriptions of their inventions shortly before a patent application was filed. Finally, a grace period is said to benefit inventions that require testing in a “real world” environment. In contrast, supporters of the European absolute novelty regime have advocated that a grace period increases legal uncertainties. They suggest that an inventor’s ability to delay the filing of a patent application until after a full year of commercial activity has transpired is unjustified, for it slows the inventor’s entry into the patent system. According to the supporters of an “absolute novelty” regime, education on the existing requirements to obtain a patent presents the most effective way of avoiding forfeitures.7
Although views vary on the propriety of a grace period, most would admit that the choice of a one-year period within § 102(b) is an arbitrary one. There is nothing inviolate about one year: prior to 1939, the grace period consisted of two years within the United States. And as noted, the Japanese patent statute, which provides a grace period solely of use by inventors, is currently set at six months. At least we can be grateful for the ease of calculation that the statute presently provides.
16.2.2  “Public Use” Under § 102(b)
One event that will raise a statutory bar is “public use” of the technology in question by either the patent applicant or anyone else, within the United States more than one year prior to the date of the application. The concept of “public use” owes its origins to the Supreme Court’s early opinion in Pennock v. Dialogue.8 The plaintiff’s patent went towards a method for manufacturing a type of rubber hose useful for conveying air and fluids. The invention had been built by 1811, but the inventor did not file a patent application until seven years later. In the meantime, the inventor had licensed a third party to market the hose and enjoyed considerable sales. The inventor later asserted his patent against a competitor. The defendant urged that the patent should be struck down based upon section 1 of the Patent Act of 1793, which provided that an invention must be one that was “not known or used before the application” to be patentable.
Writing for the Supreme Court, Justice Story affirmed a judgment for the defendant. Story reasoned that the words “not known or used before the application” did not refer to knowledge or use by inventors themselves. Because inventors must know of their own work product, a literal interpretation of section 1 would lead to a rejection of every patent application. In addition, Story reasoned, Congress could not have meant to deny patents where the inventor merely employed others to assist in the construction or use of the invention, or in cases where the invention had been used without the inventor’s consent. Instead, the Court held that the “true meaning” of the statute was to deny patents to inventions “known or used by the public before the application.”
Subsequent patent statutes codified the concept of “public use” pioneered in Pennock v. Dialogue. The courts have interpreted the term broadly, holding that even a limited use that results in negligible public exposure will trigger the “public use” bar. Egbert v. Lippmann,9 long the target of feeble classroom wit, well illustrates this point. There, a Samuel H. Barnes invented an improved corset spring (or “steel”) after hearing complaints from a young lady friend, Frances Lee, as well as a Miss Cugier. Samuel gave one set to Frances in 1855 and another to her in 1858. Frances wore the springs within some of her corsets for a “long time,” even inserting them into different corsets when the original garment wore out. Samuel and Frances later “intermarried.” Sometime 328in 1863, a Mr. Sturgis visited the couple and received an explanation of the working of the corset springs from Frances. A patent application was filed in 1866 and in due course a patent issued. After Samuel passed away and Frances remarried, she brought a patent infringement suit. Among the defenses was that the corset spring was in public use before the critical date.
The Supreme Court held that Frances’ employment of the corset springs was a “public use” in the sense of the patent law. The Court judged that the “public use” standard could be satisfied by the inventor’s gift of a single patented article to one person. Noting that “some inventions are by their very character only capable of being used where they cannot be seen or observed by the public eye,” the Court further concluded that “if its inventor sells a machine of which his invention forms a part, and allows it to be used without restriction of any kind, the use is a public one.” Accordingly, the patent-at-suit was held invalid.
The dissenting opinion by Justice Miller observed that the majority’s holding seemed to remove the term “public” from the statute: “If the little steep spring inserted in a single pair of corsets, and used by only one woman, covered by her outer-clothing, and in a position always withheld from public observation, is a public use of that piece of steel, I am at a loss to know the line between a public and a private use.” Although the dissent’s reading of the statute initially seems persuasive, modern technologies increasingly justify the holding of the majority. Like the corset springs of Egbert v. Lippmann, inventions in disciplines ranging from biotechnology to electronics exhibit a noninforming character. For example, members of the public remain unable to discern the inner workings of new electronic circuitry even after listening to the radio of which those circuits form a part. A contrary holding would have loosened the impact of § 102(b) upon inventors within such technical fields. A better ground for dissent may have been the unwillingness of the seemingly scandalized Court, which took pains to note that Samuel “slept on his rights for seven years,” to imply a relationship of confidentiality between Samuel and Frances.
The treatment of prior, secret uses of an invention has also lead to some strained interpretations of the term “public use.” Although the text of § 102(b) does not differentiate between patent applicants and third parties, the courts have nonetheless drawn distinctions between these two categories of actors when determining the prior art effect of secret uses. In particular, the courts have held that secret activity comprises a “public use” within the meaning of § 102(b) when performed by the patent applicant. However, the identical use, when performed by a third party, will not serve as prior art against an unrelated applicant. In so doing, the courts have sought to balance two of the chief policies undergirding § 102, preservation of the public domain and maintenance of the statutory patent term.
The Federal Circuit’s early opinion in Gore v. Garlock10 exemplifies third party secret use cases. Gore obtained a patent including process claims for quickly stretching crystalline, unsintered polytetrafluroethylene (commonly known under the trademark “Teflon”). During later enforcement litigation, a competitor learned that a John Cropper, living in New Zealand, had earlier invented the same technology. Prior to the critical date, Cropper both sent a letter describing the invention to a Massachusetts company, and sold his machine to Budd. Budd employees were told to maintain the Cropper machine in confidence, and at some later point Budd practiced the process.
On appeal from a patent enforcement proceeding, the Federal Circuit described the Budd and Cropper commercializations as secret and not a “public use” under § 102(b). Chief Judge Markey noted that if Budd had sold anything, it was stretched Teflon, and not the process used in producing it. Further, Budd’s use of the machine did not enrich the public domain, because an observer of the machine could not determine such parameters as the stretching speed or traits of the stretched material. The court concluded that “[a]s between a prior inventor who benefits from a process by selling its product but suppresses, conceals, or otherwise keeps the process from the public, and a later inventor who promptly files a patent application from which the public will gain a disclosure of the process, the law favors the latter.”11
Judge Learned Hand’s decision in Metallizing Engineering Co. v. Kenyon Bearing & Auto Parts,12 demonstrates that a court will reach a different holding where the secret use is made by the applicant himself. The technology there concerned a process for reconstructing machine parts known as “metallizing.” The inventor, Meduna, maintained the process as a trade secret. Only the reconditioned parts could be viewed by the public, for Meduna kept the process under lock and key. He filed a patent application on August 6, 1942, but had been practicing the process before the critical date. During patent infringement litigation, the district court held that Meduna’s concealed process did not comprise a “public use” within the statute.
Following an appeal, the Second Circuit panel reversed the trial court. Judge Hand identified a distinction in secret use cases between “(1) [t]he effect upon his right to a patent of the inventor’s competitive exploitation of his machine or of his process” and “(2) the contribution which a prior use by another person makes to the art.”13 Judge Hand agreed that in the second set of circumstances, the third party had not made a “public use” under the predecessor statute to § 102(b). Citing his earlier opinion in Gillman v. Stern, Judge Hand concluded that the issue in third party cases “was whether a prior use which did not 330disclose the invention to the art was within the statute, and it is well settled that it is not.”14
Judge Hand went on to explain, however, that a different policy concern arose in the event of secret uses by the inventor. He noted that secret uses allow inventors to delay filing a patent application beyond the grace period and thus “extend the period of monopoly.”15 Concerning an inventor who secretly exploited his technology for a time longer than the grace period, Hand concluded that if “he goes beyond that period of probation, he forfeits his right regardless of how little the public may have learned about the invention.”16
Hand’s observations bear further discussion. The statute currently limits the patent term to twenty years from the date a patent application is filed at the PTO. Section 102(b) also offers inventors the privilege of a one-year grace period in which to put the invention to public use before filing that application. The maximum period from the initial commercialization to expiration of an associated patent, then, is ordinarily twenty-one years. An inventor who practiced a technology as a trade secret for many years before filing an application could disrupt this scheme, in effect delaying the patent expiration date. Declaring the inventor’s secret use to be a “public use” within § 102(b) prevents this abuse. In effect this scheme forces the inventor to choose between patent law and trade secret law as the desired legal regime to protect the commercially operable invention.17 Yet because this policy concern is not present when the secret commercial use was not made by the inventor, the more natural reading of the term “public use” should prevail in third party cases like Gore v. Garlock.
Both Gore v. Garlock and Metallizing Engineering involved process claims. Similar logic would seem to apply to product patents, provided that the product had been kept in secrecy and used commercially. For example, suppose that Warhol, a taxi driver, invents an improved fuel injector for use in an internal combustion engine. Warhol installs the fuel injector in her taxi and, beginning on January 19, 2003, uses the fuel injector on a daily basis. Further suppose that Warhol never shows the fuel injector to others and never opens the hood of her automobile outside of her locked, personal garage. Provided that Warhol files a patent application at the PTO directed towards her fuel injector by January 19, 2004, she will fall within the statutory grace period. However, should she file the application after that date, § 102(b) would prohibit the issuance of a patent due to a “public use” of the fuel injector. In that case a third party inventor would be able to obtain a patent on the same fuel injector, unhindered by Warhol’s secret use.
16.2.3  “On Sale” Under § 102(b)
Another patent-defeating event specified by § 102(b) is that the invention was placed “on sale” in the United States by anyone, more than one year before the filing of the patent application. This event is distinct from “public use,” although judicial opinions sometimes do not carefully distinguish between the two events. The statutory language calls for the invention merely to be “on sale,” not necessarily sold. Even a single offer to sell may suffice to bar patentability.18 The on-sale bar may be triggered by anyone,19 so long as the sales activities occur in the United States.
Although § 102(b) speaks of the invention being on sale in the United States, the courts have interpreted the statute to require sales activity with respect to a physical embodiment of the invention, as compared to more abstract patent rights in the invention.20 Thus, an offer to license patent rights or the transfer of patent rights from an employee to an employer does not trigger the bar. The on-sale bar would apply to sales activity involving commercial embodiments of the invention, however.
The Federal Circuit has recognized a notable exception to the on-sale bar. The on-sale bar must involve separate and unrelated parties. Where the parties are related, the courts may disregard the sale provided that “the seller so controls the purchaser that the invention remains out of the public’s hands.”21 Pertinent factors to see whether the on-sale bar applies to transactions between related parties include whether there was a need for testing by other than the patentee; the amount of control exercised; the stage of development of the invention; whether payments were made and the basis thereof; whether confidentiality was required; and whether technological changes were made.22
A recurring issue under § 102(b) was whether sales activity may trigger the on-sale bar where the invention has not yet been physically constructed. Some opinions, such as Timely Products Corp. v. Arron,23 held or assumed that the on-sale bar was inapplicable where the invention was not ready “on hand” at the time of sale. Others, most notably the controversial opinion in UMC Electronics Co. v. United States,24 concluded that there was no strict requirement that the invention be “reduced to practice” for the on-sale bar to apply. A choice between these competing positions depended upon a weighing of the common sense view that something cannot be sold if it has not yet been constructed; an awareness of everyday commercial practices, such as the 332“vaporware” phenomenon in the software industry; and the desire to provide inventors with a definite standard for determining when they must file a patent application.
The Supreme Court opinion in Pfaff v. Wells Electronics25 resolved the “reduction to practice” issue. Pfaff was the named inventor on a patent directed towards a computer chip socket. Prior to the critical date, Pfaff presented his inventive concept to representatives of Texas Instruments. Although Pfaff had not yet constructed even a single prototype, the Texas Instruments representatives nonetheless placed a large purchase order for the sockets. A third party manufacturer ultimately produced a working embodiment of the invention after the critical date. Following the issuance of the chip socket patent, Pfaff brought suit against a competitor, which argued that the claims were invalid due to the on sale bar.
The Court agreed with the defendant that the on-sale bar applied under the facts. Justice Stevens set forth a two-part test to determine whether an invention was “on sale” within the meaning of § 102(b). “First, the product must be the subject of a commercial offer for sale.” The Court believed that this test satisfied the inventive community’s desire for certainty, because inventors could “both understand and control the timing of the first commercial marketing of the invention.” Here, Pfaff had accepted the Texas Instruments purchase order before the critical date.
The second part of the test was that “the invention must be ready for patenting.” The Court recognized at least two ways to satisfy this condition. The invention may have been physically constructed: an “actual reduction to practice” in the language of the patent law. Alternatively, “drawings or other descriptions of the invention sufficiently detailed to enable a person skilled in the art to practice the invention” would also suffice. Pfaff’s delivery of detailed engineering specifications and diagrams to the manufacturer prior to the critical date demonstrated that he had fulfilled this second prong.
16.2.4  Experimental Use
The concept of experimental use further refines the meaning of the statutory term “public use” in § 102(b). If the use is judged as experimental, then it is not a “public use” within the meaning of § 102(b). The experimental use doctrine also appears to apply to inventions placed “on sale” prior to the critical date, although far less precedent addresses this situation.
The doctrine of experimental use essentially provides inventors with additional “tinker time” beyond the one-year grace period. In deciding experimental use cases, courts must balance two competing policies. The first, a principal focus of § 102(b), is to allow inventors sufficient time to determine whether an invention is suitable for its intended purposes. 333The second is a concern for the integrity of the statutory patent term. Overbroad application of the experimental use doctrine would allow an inventor to delay filing a patent application and, consequentially, delay the date of patent expiration.
The 1877 Supreme Court opinion in City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co.26 remains the most significant experimental use case. There, Nicholson invented an improved wooden pavement. In 1848, Nicholson installed the pavement on a portion of a toll road owned by his company. The road was open to the public and subject to continuous use through 1854, when Nicholson filed a patent application. During this time, Nicholson regularly inspected the pavement to determine its durability under various traffic and weather conditions. Nicholson later brought suit against the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which had laid allegedly infringing pavement.
The Court decided that because Nicholson’s use was experimental in nature, it was not a “public use” within the meaning of the predecessor statute to § 102(b). The Court reasoned that the public interest supported the filing of application on “perfect and properly tested” inventions, as compared to less refined technologies. Where an inventor has made “a bona fide effort to bring his invention to perfection, or to ascertain whether it will answer the purpose intended,” the Court held that the public use bar should not apply.
City of Elizabeth may be subjected to ready criticism. One wonders why the statutory grace period did not suffice for Nicholson’s testing purposes, particularly since he did not appear to make a single change to the pavement during a seven-year period. And surely testing in a laboratory or otherwise more secluded environment—say, a factory grounds where the employees could have been subjected to a confidentiality agreement—would have fulfilled Nicholson’s purposes. If the Court was so moved by Nicholson’s desire to build a long-lasting pavement, then seemingly every patent applicant would do well to stress that durability was among the aims of the invention. Perhaps the weakness of the concept of a procrustean grace period of varying length for each patent applicant has lead to only infrequent findings of experimental use in modern patent cases.
More recently, the precedent of the Federal Circuit has called for an analysis of the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the inventor has engaged in an experimental use. Among the numerous indicia of experimentation identified by the court are:
(1) the number of prototypes and duration of testing;
(2) the attention to records or reports during the testing;
(3) the existence of a confidentiality arrangement;
(4) the receipt of any commercial advantage by the patentee;
(5) the inventor’s control over the testing;
(6) the tailoring of the sort of testing with respect to the specific features of the invention; and
(7) whether the invention allowed the testing to be conducted without public access, through concealment of the technology or other means.27
The Federal Circuit has also stressed that the putative experimentation must go towards the technical features of the invention.28 Testing to predict whether the invention will enjoy marketplace success does not constitute experimental use within the meaning of § 102(b).
16.2.5  Patented, Printed Publications and “In This Country”
Under § 102(b), the fact that an invention has been subject to public use or been placed on sale is germane only if those events occurred “in this country.” Section 102(b) also denies patentability to inventions that have been “patented” or described in a “printed publication” before the critical date anywhere in the world. As with the terms “public use” and “on sale,” each of these terms has been subjected to a detailed construction by the courts and PTO. An overview of this interpretative project is necessary to achieve a proper understanding of § 102(b).
Review of these terms is appropriate for a second reason. Several of these terms also appear in other parts of § 102, in particular paragraphs (a), (d) and (g). Because the courts have generally interpreted these terms consistently within § 102, their introduction here will be of appreciable assistance in future reading.
16.2.5.1  “Patented”
An invention that has been “patented” one year before the date of filing under § 102(b) will bar a later U.S. application. Issues over the term “patented” ordinarily arise with respect to patents granted abroad. Global legal regimes yield an exotic array of intellectual property rights that can differ significantly from familiar domestic patents. The courts have been left to determine which of these rights constitutes a patent within the terms of § 102.
The Federal Circuit opinion in In re Carlson is illustrative.29 The PTO became aware of several pieces of prior art pertinent to Carlson’s claimed dual compartment bottle. One of them was a so-called Geschmacksmuster (GM), a German design registration. Registration of the GM was effective at the time it was deposited at a local government office in Germany. Lists of registered designs were published shortly thereafter in the German Federal Gazette. The Gazette provided a general description of the general design, the class of articles deposited, identifying numbers of the deposited designs, the name and location of 335the registrant, the date and time of registration, and the city location of the registered design.
Following PTO rejection of the claim of his design patent based in part upon the GM, Carlson appealed to the Federal Circuit. Carlson proposed that under § 102 “the embodiment of foreign protection must take a form that fully discloses the nature of the protected design in a medium of communication capable of being widely disseminated.” Arguing that the Gazette entry did not fulfill this standard, Carlson urged that the GM could not be considered “patented” within the meaning of § 102(a).
Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Clevenger upheld the PTO rejection. The court reasoned that the Gazette entry sufficed to alert readers that a multiple bottle design had been registered. An interested reader could then proceed to the appropriate German office to obtain the actual design, either in person or through an agent. Although cognizant of the difficulties entailed for a U.S. applicant to scrutinize a particular GM, the court noted that this burden was imposed by statute.
As suggested by Carlson, a second complexity with regard to foreign rights is the determination of the precise date an invention has been “patented.” In the United States this analysis is straightforward. U.S. patents are granted on the same day that notice of their issuance is published in the PTO Official Gazette. This single date also marks the time when the exclusive rights associated with the patent become effective, and also the point at which interested members of the public may obtain a complete copy of the patent instrument and the prosecution history. Foreign patent systems may cause these events to occur on different dates. Where some occur more than one year before the applicant filed in the United States and some less than a year, the choice of the key date becomes crucial to patentability.
The moment at which an invention becomes “patented” within the meaning of § 102 is subject to a case-by-case determination. The prevailing view, however, is that an invention is patented at the time the sovereign bestows a formal grant of legal rights to the applicant.30 In addition, courts have required that the patent be publicly available, typically through public notice, publication, or the possibility of inspection at a government office.
16.2.5.2  Printed Publications
The term “printed publication” has been afforded a liberal construction. A document need neither be formally typeset nor published to serve as a source of prior art under § 102. Instead, the courts have accounted for “ongoing advances in the technologies of data storage, retrieval and dissemination.”31 Any document available to the public, no matter where located, constitutes a “printed publication” within § 102. Thus, such documents as handwritten notes, papers distributed at a conference, or 336advertising circulars may all constitute printed publications.32 Documents distributed to a small group under circumstances of confidentiality would not.33
The effective date of a publication is the date it becomes accessible to the public. The document comprises prior art under § 102 whether or not anyone has actually reviewed its contents. The text of the printed publication need not be written in the English language to be effective prior art.
The Federal Circuit opinion in In re Hall, a § 102(b) case, offers an instructive application of these principles. There, the PTO cited a doctoral thesis available at the library of the University of Freiburg, Germany, which had been written more than one year before the applicant applied for a patent, as a bar to granting the patent. Although the applicant argued that the reference was invalid because the exact date of cataloging and shelving was unknown, the court recognized that ordinary business practices do not always call for the memorialization of such information. Judge Baldwin was satisfied that general practices of the Freiburg library would have rendered the doctoral thesis publicly accessible well before the critical date.
The applicant next urged that even if catalogued, a single thesis in one university library should not constitute prior art. According to the applicant, the Freiburg thesis was not sufficiently accessible so as to inform interested practitioners about the technology. The Federal Circuit agreed that a printed publication must be publicly accessible, but held that the Freiburg thesis was sufficiently attainable to diligent individuals interested in the art. That a distant, foreign language thesis should serve as prior art against a domestic applicant may trouble some readers. Yet Congress fashioned § 102 out of the apparent belief that U.S. inventors should be held accountable for knowledge that had been reduced to a tangible form, even where that knowledge has been memorialized abroad. In an era of increasing technical harmonization and access to information, this judgment seems sound.
The Federal Circuit went the other way in In re Cronyn.34 The reference at issue there was a senior thesis deposited in the library of Reed College, a solely undergraduate institution located in Portland, Oregon. Although the library was open to the public, the thesis was neither generally catalogued nor indexed. Instead, all student theses were listed on a special index of cards available for public examination, both at the main college library and in a shoebox stored in the chemistry department. Identifying “dissemination and public accessibility” as the pertinent indicia of whether a prior art reference was “published” or not, the court held that the latter standard was not fulfilled here. The fact that the theses were distinctly filed, as well as the sorting of 337individual cards only via the name of the author, led to the conclusion that the theses “had not been catalogued or indexed in a meaningful way.” Comparison of Cronyn with Hall suggests that the decision whether a particular reference rises to the level of a “printed publication” is an intensely factual one.
16.2.5.3  “In this Country”
Under § 102(b), the fact that an invention is in “public use” or “on sale” is significant only if those events occur “in this country.” An instructive opinion on the “in this country” limitation of § 102(b) is Robbins Co. v. Lawrence Manufacturing Co.35 Robbins considered whether an embodiment of a patented tunnel boring machine was on sale “in this country” before the critical date of February 18, 1962. The U.S.-based patentee had submitted a detailed written offer in response to the Hydro–Electric Commission of Tasmania, Australia. The parties entered into a contract in 1960, resulting in patentee delivery of a set of machine components to Seattle in 1961. The components were then shipped to Australia, assembled under the supervision of the patentee, and extensively employed prior to the critical date.
The Ninth Circuit judged that a “product is ‘on sale’ in the United States, within the proscription of the statute, if substantial activity prefatory to a sale occurs in the United States. An offer for sale, made in this country, is sufficient prefatory activity occurring here, to bring the matter within the statute.”36 According to Judge Carter, that standard was met because Sugden, a representative of the Hydro–Electric Commission, negotiated the contract with the patentee in Seattle. Sugden also traveled to Seattle to observe the shop testing, disassembly and packing of the machine. Interestingly, the court’s holding suggests that domestic manufacture of a patented invention would not fulfill the “in this country” limitation of § 102 if the entirety of sales activity occurred abroad.37
Commentators have questioned the wisdom of maintaining a geographical distinction in § 102.38 Although the likely motivation for this statutory language was the perceived difficulty of obtaining evidence of foreign activity, modern conveniences of communication and transportation mitigate against this concern. More recently drafted patent statutes, most notably the European Patent Convention, do not restrict the prior art territorially. Additionally, the “in this country” limitation of § 102 also appears as a rare instance of discrimination against those members of the technological community based in the United States. Activity that would not prejudice foreign actors acting in their home markets may deleteriously impact U.S. inventors, a seemingly unsound result as a matter of U.S. patent policy.
16.2.6  Abandonment Under § 102(c)
Section 102(c) bars a patent where the applicant “has abandoned the invention.” This statute does not refer to disposal of the invention itself, however, but instead to the intentional surrender of an invention to the public. Once an inventor has donated the technology to the public, she will be barred from seeking a patent. Older Supreme Court opinions instruct that abandonment may occur where an inventor expressly dedicates it to the public, through a deliberate relinquishment or conduct evidencing an intent not to pursue patent protection.39 The circumstances must be such that others could reasonably rely upon the inventor’s renunciation.40
The course of human affairs is such that few individuals expressly cede their patentable inventions to the public without seeking compensation. As a result, a paucity of more recent precedent considers § 102(c) in any meaningful way. Perhaps the only circumstance implicating this statute would involve an express public statement by an inventor dedicating a technology to the public. If a subsequent call from the inventor’s creditors led to second thoughts and the filing of a patent application, § 102(c) might then come into play.
It is important not to confuse the use of the term “abandonment” in § 102(c) with other uses of the term in the patent law. In particular, § 102(g) refers to individuals who have “abandoned, suppressed or concealed” the invention itself, for example, by suspending work on a project before developing a working model. Section 102(c) instead concerns abandonment of the right to obtain a patent. This statute also does not prevent inventors from withdrawing applications from the PTO, an action that is also termed an “abandonment.” The Patent Act allows inventors to retract patent applications from the PTO without necessarily prejudicing their right ultimately to obtain a patent. Inventors who earlier abandoned applications are always free to file again. Although these applicants will lose the benefit of their earlier filing date, and thus may expose themselves to bars under §§ 102(b) or (d), they will not be impacted by § 102(c) if all the circumstances do not indicate abandonment of the invention to the public.
16.2.7  Delayed United States Filing Under § 102(d)
Section 102(d) bars a U.S. patent when (1) an inventor files a foreign patent application more than twelve months before filing the U.S. application, and (2) a foreign patent results from that application prior to the U.S. filing date. The requirements are conjunctive: both requirements must be met in order to trigger § 102(d) and bar the issuance of a patent. By encouraging prompt filing in the United States, 339§ 102(d) ensures that the term of U.S. patents will not appreciably extend past the expiration date of parallel foreign patents.41
An example illustrates the application of § 102(d). Suppose that Orlanth, the inventor of an electric trolling motor, files an application at the Swedish Patent Office on May 25, 2002. The Swedish application matures into a granted Swedish patent on August 1, 2003. If Orlanth has not filed his U.S. patent application at the PTO as of August 1, 2003, the date of the Swedish patent grant, the § 102(d) bar would be triggered.
Commentators have often approached § 102(d) with some distaste.42 Because inventors may choose to file a patent application only in the United States, the policy goal of assuring that the U.S. market will become patent-free contemporaneously with foreign markets seems poorly served via the § 102(d) bar. More telling is that § 102(d) almost exclusively works against foreign inventors. Individuals based in the United States seldom encounter problems with § 102(d), for inventors the world over tend to file applications in their home patent offices first. And while this statute comports with the letter of Article 27 of the TRIPS Agreement, which requires that “patents shall be available … without discrimination as to the place of the invention,” § 102(d) in practice derogates from the principle of national treatment of foreign inventors.
Until recently, the best that could be said about § 102(d) is that it was seldom employed. Because patent prosecution almost always requires more than one year to complete, and because most foreign patent applications are published more than twelve months before their grant, the published application itself might be available as “printed publication” under § 102(b). However, a 1993 Federal Circuit opinion interpreting § 102(d), In re Kathawala,43 appears to have breathed new life into the statute.
Kathawala, inventor of cholesterol-inhibiting compounds, filed patent applications in the United States, Greece and Spain. The three applications included substantially the same specifications but contained differing claims. The Greek patent claimed compounds, pharmaceutical compositions, methods of use and methods of making. The U.S. patent contained all but the method claims. The Spanish patent claimed only the method of making the compound. Not only was the U.S. application filed more than one year after the Greek and Spanish applications were filed, each of these foreign applications actually led to granted patents before the U.S. filing date.
Appealing the PTO’s imposition of a § 102(d) bar before the Federal Circuit, Kathawala offered two arguments worthy of note here. First, Kathawala asserted that because the Spanish patent contained only method of making claims, which were not claimed in the U.S. application, 340the invention claimed in the United States had not been previously “patented” in a foreign country within the meaning of § 102(d). Kathawala also urged that the claims of the Greek patent were invalid because, at the time the patent issued, the Greek patent law actually disallowed patents directed to pharmaceuticals.
The Federal Circuit had little trouble dispensing with these arguments. According to Judge Lourie, § 102(d) should not be given a constrained reading. It was enough that Kathawala’s Spanish application disclosed and provided the opportunity to claim all aspects of his invention, including the compounds themselves. Allowing dilatory inventors to obtain U.S. patents on others aspect of the same “invention” patented too long ago abroad would frustrate the policy of the statute, according to the court. The court also dismissed Kathawala’s arguments regarding the Greek patent, declining to speculate on the patent eligibility law of Greece. Both Greek and U.S. patents included claims towards the same subject matter because Kathawala had put them there, and their validity was irrelevant to whether the subject matter was “patented” in accordance with § 102(d).
Not only was the Kathawala court’s unwillingness to consider Greek patent law surprising, its generous view of patented subject matter seems questionable. Few members of the patent community would say that disclosed but unclaimed subject matter is patented, for the claims are the measure of patentee rights. Perhaps Kathawala should have been an obviousness case. But given the robust holding in Kathawala, applicants should be particularly wary of foreign patent registration regimes. Under these systems, foreign patent offices do not fully examine applications for compliance with the patent law, leading to short processing times and prompt issuances of foreign patents.
§ 16.3  Prior Art for Novelty: Prior Invention
The remaining provisions of § 102, paragraphs (a), (e), (f) and (g), do not concern the date an inventor filed a patent application at the PTO. They instead pertain to a real world event: the date on which the subject matter sought to be patented was actually invented. These provisions indicate that the first individual to invent a particular technology should be awarded the patent. At the time this treatise goes to press, the United States faces mounting pressure to switch to the world norm of a first-to-file patent system, where novelty is assessed solely on the filing date. But at least for the near future, the first-to-invent system appears firmly fixed within the U.S. patent regime.
16.3.1  Prior Invention Under § 102(a)
Section 102(a) states the essential first-to-invent rule unique to the U.S. patent system. An invention “known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for a patent” may not be patented. Under this rule, in order to obtain a 341patent, an applicant must prove that he actually invented a claimed invention prior to the date of an anticipatory reference. For example, suppose that Professor Cool files a patent application on December 1, 2003, claiming a new refrigeration technology. During prosecution of the application, a PTO examiner discovers that another person, Otto, had used the same technology claimed by Cool as of October 12, 2003. Because Otto used the invention less than one year before Cool’s filing date, the § 102(b) bar does not apply. Nonetheless, to obtain a patent, Cool must demonstrate that she invented the subject matter of her patent application prior to Otto’s use. Two concepts are critical here: the meaning of the term “known or used” within § 102(a), and the precise activity sufficient to demonstrate a date of invention.
The literal language of § 102(a) requires only that the prior invention be “known or used:” unlike § 102(b), § 102(a) does not include the word “public.” The courts have nonetheless interpreted § 102(a) to require some form of public knowledge of the first inventor’s invention before the second inventor’s patent application will be rejected. Judge Learned Hand’s opinion in Gillman v. Stern remains a leading case on this point.
In Gillman, one Wenczel obtained a patent on a pneumatic machine for quilting fabric. The patent was later asserted during infringement litigation. The accused infringer learned of a third party, Haas, who had employed a substantially similar machine. Because Wenczel had filed his application in 1931, uses by Haas in 1929 and 1930 did not trigger a statutory bar under the two-year grace period of the day. In contemporary terms, the issue before the court was whether the prior use by Haas rendered the quilting machine “known or used by others” as provided in § 102(a). The controlling fact was that Haas maintained the machine as a trade secret. Haas sold quilted fabric, not the pneumatic machine, and the fabric he produced appeared the same as any other.
After canvassing the precedents, Judge Hand concluded that an inventor who kept his technology as a trade secret could not be judged the first inventor in terms of the patent law. Inventors like Haas had chosen not to augment the store of public knowledge, and therefore their efforts should not prejudice later patent applicants. In contrast to Haas, Wenczel had brought about the publication of a patent instrument and the enrichment of the art. In dicta, Judge Hand also noted that the patent law distinguished between secret and noninforming uses. According to Judge Hand, the precedent had afforded noninforming uses the status of prior art. Judge Hand observed that this scheme might potentially lead to anomalous results where the public was unable to profit from the noninforming use.
The holding in Gillman has the merit of placing §§ 102(a) and (b) in accord with regard to the prior art status of secret and noninforming uses. For example, opinions like Gore v. Garlock have lent consistent interpretations to the term “public use” in cases of third party secret uses. This happy harmony may have actually originated from an oversight: 342in the later case of Metallizing Engineering, Judge Hand candidly admitted to confusing §§ 102(a) and (b), as demonstrated by his frequent reference to the term “public use” in Gillman. Subsequent opinions have nonetheless been persuaded by the reasoning of Gillman and upheld its result.
National Tractor Pullers Association v. Watkins,44 presents one of the more unusual factual circumstances in which a court applied the Gillman rule. There, the declaratory judgment plaintiff asserted that a patented device useful in tractor pulling contests was invalid under § 102(a). The plaintiff pointed to earlier drawings made by a third party on the underside of a tablecloth in his mother’s kitchen. The drawings had never been publicized, nor had the depicted device been commercialized. The court concluded that these drawings did not comprise prior art, declaring: “Prior knowledge as set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 102(a) must be prior public knowledge, that is knowledge which is reasonably accessible to the public.”
The other key aspect of § 102(a) is determining an applicant’s date of invention. The nature of the activity that comprises the applicant’s invention date is also not elaborated in § 102(a). The statute merely states the phrase “the invention thereof by the applicant for a patent” without further definition. However, the drafters of the 1952 Act relied upon extensive case law concerning predecessor statutes to § 102(a). This precedent set forth an elaborate definition of the level of activity that amounted to an “invention date” in the patent law. This definition involves three terms of art: conception, reduction to practice and diligence.
For present purposes, a working definition of each of these terms suffices. Conception concerns the mental act of invention. It occurs when the inventor has formed “a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention, as it is hereafter to be applied in practice.”45 Reduction to practice ordinarily follows conception. An actual reduction to practice consists of a demonstration that the invention is suitable for its intended purpose.46 Actual reduction to practice involves the construction of a working model of the invention and often some minimal testing. Constructive reduction to practice consists of the filing of a patent application at the PTO. Last, diligence involves the showing of continuous and reasonable efforts towards the reduction to practice of an invention.
These concepts interface with the time of “invention” noted in § 102(a) in the following way. An actual reduction to practice presents the most straightforward way to demonstrate that an inventor was possessed of the invention prior to the date of a reference. That is, if an inventor can show that he constructed an operable, proven prototype of 343the invention prior to the effective date of a reference, then that reference is disregarded under the terms of § 102(a).
Even if the applicant has not reduced the invention to practice prior to the reference date, however, he still has the opportunity to remove the reference. First, he must demonstrate that he conceived of the invention prior to the date of the reference. Second, he must show that he acted diligently from the reference date until a subsequent reduction to practice. Such a reduction to practice may be actual or constructive.
That an actual reduction to practice, achieved before the effective date of a reference, demonstrates possession of an invention to the satisfaction of the patent law should be unsurprising. But that the combination of conception and diligence should allow an inventor to avoid a § 102(a) reference may at first appear elusive. In this regard the patent law recognizes that anyone can have a good idea without requiring considerable funding. In contrast, a reduction to practice usually demands that an inventor marshal significant resources, whether he attempts to construct a working prototype or chooses to file a patent application. So long as he remains diligent in working towards either sort of reduction to practice, § 102(a) will allow him to obtain a patent. The statute may thus be seen as promoting an equality of opportunity between actors in the technological community with different levels of financial means.
It is important to note that in the 1952 Act, Congress expressly articulated the concepts of conception, reduction to practice and diligence within § 102(g). The use of these concepts to specify an invention date still governs under § 102(a). This text more thoroughly discusses the concepts of conception, reduction to practice and diligence in § 16.3.2 below.
Another point worth mentioning is that § 102(a) applies only to activities by persons other than the inventor herself. Obviously, you can’t out-invent yourself, so the first-to-invent principle of § 102(a) makes prior art only out of knowledge, use, patents, or publications originating from someone other than the patent applicant (in cases of acquisition proceedings at the PTO) or patentee (in cases of infringement litigation). For example, suppose that Dr. Barleybean uses a method of canning shrimp in the United States on March 1, 2004. Barleybean then files a patent application at the PTO on June 1, 2004. The Barleybean use does not count as prior art under § 102(a) because it was not “by others,” as § 102(a) compels. Of course, if Barleybean made a public use of her invention more than one year before her filing date, then the statutory bar of § 102(b) would apply.
An important procedural aspect of § 102(a) involves the use of Rule 131 at the PTO. This rule allows patent applicants to declare an invention date prior to the date of a prior art reference. This declaration is typically accompanied by a detailed factual showing, such as diagrams or laboratory notebooks, that demonstrate sufficient inventive activity to pre-date the reference. The need for Rule 131 arises because inventors 344need not attest to their date of inventive activity when they file patent applications. Instead, they reveal their invention date on an ad hoc basis when the examiner produces a pertinent prior art reference. Use of Rule 131 is informally known as “swearing behind” or “antedating” a reference.
A brief example best illustrates the workings of § 102(a) and Rule 131. Suppose that a patent examiner discovers a technical journal article published one month before a particular application’s filing date. That article fully discloses the claimed invention and would anticipate the application if it serves as prior art under § 102. Because the article was published within the one-year grace period established under § 102(b), the application is not subject to a statutory bar.
The examiner may issue a rejection under § 102(a), however. Without any knowledge of the true invention date, the examiner must assume that the applicant invented the claimed technology on the same date the application was filed. The examiner’s § 102(a) rejection is in the nature of an invitation, however. The applicant may file a Rule 131 affidavit showing sufficient inventive activity prior to the effective date of the reference. In particular, the applicant must show either (1) an actual reduction to practice prior to the publication date of the journal article, or (2) conception of the invention prior to the publication date, coupled with diligence from the publication date until a subsequent reduction to practice. This reduction to practice may be either actual, which would involve the construction and testing of a prototype, or constructive, which would rely upon the filing date of the patent application. If the examiner is satisfied with the applicant’s showing, she will withdraw the rejection.
By its own terms, Rule 131 applies only to §§ 102(a) and (e). Rule 131 does not apply to statutory bars such as § 102(b), which are keyed to the filing date of the patent application. Further, the use of Rule 131 should not be confused with a true interference proceeding under § 102(g). If two patents or patent applications claim the same subject matter, then the rival inventors must engage in a priority contest to determine which is entitled to a patent.
The following hypothetical sums up our understanding of § 102(a) and Rule 131. Suppose, for example, that Dr. Quark conceived of a new machine for making shatterproof glass on March 1, 2003. He then diligently works on building a working model of his device, at last building a working prototype on May 15, 2003. Quark then files a patent application at the PTO on December 12, 2003. During the prosecution of the application, the PTO examiner discovers a Finnish patent application, published on April 20, 2003, that fully anticipates the invention claimed in Quark’s application. The § 102(b) bar does not apply because the patent application was published less than one year before the date Quark filed his application. However, the PTO examiner may reject Quark’s application based upon the published Finnish application and § 102(a). In such cases, the examiner’s rejection is essentially in the 345nature of an invitation. Quark has the opportunity to overcome the rejection by showing that, within the technical meaning of the patent law, he invented his glass-making machine prior to the date the Finnish application was published.
In this case, assuming that all of his dates of inventive activity are properly corroborated, Quark will be able to overcome the examiner’s § 102(a) rejection. Because Quark did not reduce his invention to practice until May 15, 2003, almost one month after the publication date of the Finnish application, Quark cannot rely upon his reduction to practice date alone. However, Quark may submit evidence that (1) he conceived of the invention on March 1, 2003, prior to the April 20, 2003, publication date of the Finnish patent application; and (2) he was diligent until his own actual reduction to practice on May 15, 2003. Upon receipt of this evidence via a Rule 131 affidavit, the PTO examiner will withdraw this rejection and, absent any other objections, allow Quark to obtain his patent.
Curious readers may wonder why the PTO examiner does not further pursue the dates of invention concerning the Finnish patent application. After all, someone–presumably someone in Finland–invented the same glass-making machine as Quark, and almost certainly did so prior to the date the Finnish application was published. Given that administrative processing must have delayed the publication of the Finnish application, why doesn’t the PTO examiner telephone Helsinki in order to determine when that application was filed at the Finnish Patent Office or, better yet, learn when the Finnish applicant actually invented the glass-making machine? The short answer is that activities such as merely inventing a machine, or filing a patent application, do not necessarily result in public disclosure of that machine. Besides, while such activity might mean that the glass-making technology was “known or used,” no evidence suggests that this knowledge or use occurred in the United States, as § 102(a) requires. Patents and printed publications are the only foreign references that count under § 102(a). As a result, the day the Finnish application was published is the first permissible date that the examiner may employ under § 102(a).
16.3.2  Priority and Prior Art Under § 102(g)
Section 102(g) consists of two sub-paragraphs. The second of these, § 102(g)(2), expressly states the general rule of priority: “A person shall be entitled to a patent unless … before the applicant’s invention thereof the invention was made in this country by another….” Section 102(g)(2) then states an important exception to this rule. If the first inventor has “abandoned, suppressed or concealed” the technology at issue, then he has essentially forfeited his special status in accordance with § 102(g)(2). Section 102(g)(2) goes on to instruct that “[i]n determining priority of invention there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception by the other.”
As suggested by its division into sub-paragraphs, § 102(g) serves two principal purposes in the patent law. Like § 102(a), § 102(g)(2) provides a source of prior art that may be used as the basis of a rejection for anticipation or nonobviousness. In these circumstances, the party asserting a § 102(g) reference is not claiming the invention for itself, but arguing that the issued patent is invalid. This effort usually involves the identification of a third party that allegedly invented first. In this sense, § 102(g) functions similarly to § 102(a).
At least two important distinctions exist between § 102(a) and (g), however. First, § 102(g) applies only to inventions “made in this country.” Under § 102(a), patents and printed publications may originate “in this or a foreign country.”
Second, we have seen that the courts have interpreted § 102(a) to require knowledge or use that was publicly accessible at the time the patented invention was made.47 Section 102(g) has not been similarly construed, however. Instead, as explained by the Court of Claims in International Glass Co. v. United States, “prior invention under 102(g) requires only that the invention be complete, i.e., conceived and reduced to practice, and not abandoned, suppressed or concealed.”48 Thus, under § 102(g) a completely private invention may serve as prior art against a later inventor. It is important to note that such private inventors may well be judged to have “abandoned, suppressed or concealed” the invention at issue, typically by maintaining the technology as a trade secret. In such cases these earlier, private inventions will not be considered within the prior art. The sorts of conduct that cause an invention to be judged “abandoned, suppressed or concealed” are discussed in § 16.3.2.7 below.
Section 102(g) serves a second function, provided in § 102(g)(1). This provision also provides a mechanism for resolving disputes relating to so-called “priority of invention.” In this class of cases, one party seeks more than merely the denial of another’s entitlement to patent rights on a particular technology. She also seeks to obtain patent rights for herself.
The need to determine priority of invention should be clear. As rivals across the globe compete to develop valuable technologies, they will often develop similar or identical inventions at approximately the same time. In such circumstances, the U.S. patent system has adopted a winner-take-all policy. Only the person or persons that first developed a particular technology will be awarded a patent. This policy is implemented through the rules set forth in § 102(g), which determine which actor will be judged the first inventor in terms of the patent law.
Section 102(g)’s function both as a rule of priority and as a source of novelty-destroying prior art can be confusing at first blush. Professor Merges has suggested a helpful framework for coming to grips with these 347distinct roles. He suggests that students consider patent priority contests as cases in which each competing inventor attempts to defeat the other’s claim of novelty. The first inventor at law is awarded the patent once she removes the last obstacle to patentability, her rival’s claim to an earlier invention date under § 102(g).49
It should be noted that until 1999, § 102(g) consisted of only a single paragraph that was nearly identical to present-day § 102(g)(2). The American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 recast existing § 102(g) as § 102(g)(2) and added a new § 102(g)(1). This legislation was intended only to clarify the rules for determining priority of invention during interference proceedings. The new, expanded version of § 102(g) more clearly demonstrates that the statute serves both as a source of prior art and a mechanism for resolving interferences.
16.3.2.1  Patent Interference Practice
Most § 102(g) priority contests are resolved at the PTO via so-called “interference” practice. A patent interference is a complex administrative proceeding that ordinarily results in the award of priority to one of its participants. These proceedings are not especially common. One estimate is that less than one-quarter of one percent of patents are subject to an interference.50 This statistic may mislead, however, because the expense of interference cases may lead to their use only for the most commercially significant applications.51 In any event, because many § 102(g) cases involve interferences, a word on their special procedures and terminology is appropriate at the start.
Interferences may occur between two pending applications, or between a pending application and an issued, unexpired patent. Section 135 requires the PTO to call for an interference when “an application is made for a patent which … would interfere with any pending application, or with any unexpired patent.” An examiner may declare an interference when she learns of two conflicting applications without any activity by the applicants. Alternatively, an applicant may initiate an interference upon discovering an issued patent, or an application published prior to its formal issuance, that claims the same invention.
Patent interference procedures typically involve some particular terminology. Many cases will refer to so-called “senior” and “junior” parties: “A senior party is the party with the earliest effective filing date…. A junior party is any other party.”52 Interferences also make use of a concept called a “count,” which corresponds to a claim which the interfering parties share. The counts of an interference define what the 348dispute is about; this is the subject matter which each of the parties asserts that it invented first.
When an application for an interference is filed, a primary examiner makes a preliminary determination “whether a basis upon which the applicant would be entitled to a judgment relative to the patentee is alleged and, if a basis is alleged, an interference may be declared.”53 If the primary examiner preliminarily determines that the application meets that requirement, the application is referred to an examiner-in-chief to determine whether an interference should go forward.54 If the examiner-in-chief determines that a prima facie case for priority has been established, the interference proceeds.55 If however, the examiner-in-chief concludes that a prima facie case has not been shown, the examiner-in-chief declares an interference but “enter[s] an order stating the reasons for the opinion and directing the applicant, within a time set in the order, to show cause why summary judgment should not be entered against the applicant.”56 If such an order to show cause issues, the applicant “may file a response to the order and state any reasons why summary judgment should not be entered.”57
If the interference continues, next comes the filing of the applicant’s preliminary statements. These statements contain allegations of the dates of various inventive activities the parties believe they can establish during an interference. After preliminary statements have been filed, the parties may submit various motions to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, raising issues that will be contested during the interference.58 The trial phase of the interference follows. The parties are given the opportunity to present affidavits, declarations and exhibits such as laboratory notebooks and publications. After the trial comes a final hearing before a three-member panel of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, consisting solely of oral argument by the parties. The Board then issues its decision, typically awarding priority of invention to one of the interfering parties. The unsuccessful party may then appeal to the Federal Circuit.
Interferences may be resolved in other ways, however. One party may assert ordinary grounds for patent invalidity; for example, that the patent claims subject matter ineligible for patenting. This effort tends to be rather uncommon, as often a defense which invalidates one application or patent will be effective for them all; but sometimes the result that no one obtains a patent is a satisfactory conclusion for one of the parties to the interference. Settlement between the parties is another option, although Congress has recognized the possibility of collusive arrangements with anticompetitive effects. The result is 35 U.S.C.A. § 135(c), which requires that the parties file copies of agreements 349reached in contemplation of termination of an interference. The filed agreements are available for public inspection.
Occasionally the Patent Office and applicants remain unaware of interfering applications, with the result that two patents directed towards the same inventive concept issue. Section 291 of the Patent Act, entitled “Interfering Patents,” addresses these hopefully rare circumstances. Owners of interfering patents may have their respective rights determined by a federal district court following the filing of a civil suit.
16.3.2.2  Inventive Activity in Foreign Countries
Before considering the statutory language of § 102(g) in greater detail, a review of the special rules regarding inventive activity performed abroad is necessary. Historically, § 104 provided that an inventor could not rely upon activity in a foreign country to establish dates of conception, reduction to practice or diligence. The only exception, which the statute continues to provide, is for persons “serving in any other country in connection with operations by or on behalf of the United States.” Although § 104 was arguably motivated by concerns over the quality of evidence of inventive activity that might be obtained from overseas, its effect was to shut foreign inventors out of the first-to-invent system. Inventors based overseas were typically left to rely upon the priority date of a foreign patent application as provided by the Paris Convention and § 119(a).59
In the face of stern international opposition to § 104, Congress twice amended the statute. In 1993, in connection with the North American Free Trade Agreement Act (NAFTA), § 104 was amended to allow proof of inventive activity in a NAFTA country. The effective date of the NAFTA amendment to § 104 is December 8, 1993. In 1994, in connection with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), § 104 was amended to allow proof of inventive activity in WTO member countries. Although the URAA legislation appears confused as to the effective date of the § 104 amendment, observers generally agree that it is January 1, 1996.60
The final episode in this saga concerns the enactment of the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999. That statute designated the existing § 102(g) as § 102(g)(2) and added § 102(g)(1). New § 102(g)(1) specifies that “during the course of an interference” inventors may establish dates of inventive activity “to the extent permitted in section 104.” This express reference to § 104 allows parties to an interference to introduce dates of inventive activity performed in the United States as well as in NAFTA and WTO member countries.
So much for interferences. Section 102(g) also serves as a source of prior art, however, as specified in § 102(g)(2). The discerning reader of 350§ 102(g) will note that § 102(g)(2) continues to require that the “invention was made in this country.” Although § 102(g)(1) recognizes NAFTA- and WTO-based amendments to § 104, § 102(g)(2) appears to suffer from a disconnect. Of what use could the newfound ability to prove dates of inventive activity under § 104 be to foreign inventors if, when they seek to apply these dates to the substantive law of § 102(g)(2), these dates have no prior art effect? Until this issue is the subject of judicial resolution or further legislative reform efforts, the prior art status of dates of foreign inventive activity remains clouded.61
Having offered the context of interference proceedings and foreign inventive activity, we can now turn to a more detailed consideration of those acts that rise to invention within § 102(g).
16.3.2.3  Conception
Conception is the formation in the mind of the inventor of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention, as it is to be applied in practice. The conception must include every feature of the claimed invention.62 The conception is complete when a person of ordinary skill in the art could practice the invention without undue experimentation.63 Although conception is a purely mental act, the courts have held that inventors may not demonstrate their date of conception solely through their own, uncorroborated testimony. Inventors must instead provide evidence of a conception date with such proofs as models, documentation and the testimony of others. In this text, this requirement of corroboration is more extensively discussed below at § 16.3.2.6.
Oka v. Youssefyeh,64 decided on appeal by the Federal Circuit following an interference, illustrates the requirement of conception. The senior party, Oka, had invented the enzyme inhibitor compounds of the count in Japan. Because § 104 at that time prohibited the entry of evidence relating to inventive acts performed abroad, Oka was left to rely upon the filing date of his Japanese application, October 31, 1980, under § 119(a).
The junior party, Youssefyeh, worked in the United States. Youssefyeh sought to rely upon § 102(g) to displace Oka as the first inventor. He wished to show that he conceived of the invention prior to October 31, 1980. If Youssefyeh could make this preliminary showing, and also demonstrate diligence at the appropriate times, he could become the first inventor in terms of § 102(g).
The Federal Circuit held that Youssefyeh had conceived of the invention during the last week of October 1980. At that point, work had begun on actually synthesizing compounds within the scope of the count. 351The court dismissed the earlier date selected by the PTO Board, October 10, 1980, at which point Youssefyeh was in possession of a method of making a compound outside the scope of the count. Chief Judge Markey recognized the general rule that, within the chemical arts, conception of a species within a genus may constitute conception of the genus. But even Youssefyeh acknowledged that the compound he had invented as of October 10th was in fact a different species, not a genus.
Having decided that Youssefyeh had conceived during the last week of October, the court was faced with an interesting priority problem. Precedent established that the actual date associated with the “last week of October” was the final date of the period, October 31, 1980. In essence, then, the parties had tied, for Youssefyeh’s conception date was the same as Oka’s filing date. Chief Judge Markey decided the case on procedural grounds. Because Oka was the senior party, he was presumptively entitled to the patent. As Youssefyeh could not show an earlier conception date, Oka was entitled to priority. Although this result appears questionable in light of PTO interference rules, which only place the burden on the junior party to demonstrate entitlement to an interference in the first instance, it appears eminently fair. Oka had undoubtedly conceived of the invention prior to filing a Japanese application and, had § 104 not barred him from demonstrating his inventive activity in Japan, could have shown he was the first inventor in fact.
16.3.2.4  Reduction to Practice
An inventor may reduce an invention to practice in two ways: (1) constructively, by filing a patent application, and (2) actually, at a minimum by constructing a working physical embodiment of the invention. If the reduction to practice is constructive, the filed application “must be for the same invention as that defined in the count in an interference, and it must contain a disclosure of the invention sufficiently adequate to enable one skilled in the art to practice the invention defined by the count, with all the limitations contained in the count, without the exercise of inventive facilities.”65
The doctrine of constructive reduction to practice strikes many observers