Source: https://patentresources.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/patent-bar-review-question-of-the-week-3-part-2/
Timestamp: 2019-08-18 03:22:50
Document Index: 235963805

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 2', 'art 1', '§ 2128', '§ 2129', '§ 2128', '§ 2128', '§ 102', '§ 2129']

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June 17, 2010 by cjagalla
Earlier this week we asked you our third Patent Bar Review Question of the Week. Times up! Here’s the question (to remind you) followed by the US Patent Office’s “Model Answer” as well as detailed commentary and analysis from from Patent Resources Group’s Academic Director Paul Gardner.
Question of the Week No. 3 (Q and A 31 from October 2000 Exam, Morning Session):
Which of the following do not represent prior art?
(A) The preamble of a Jepson claim.
(B) A technical journal as of its date of publication which is accessible to the public as of the date of its publication.
(C) A doctoral thesis indexed, cataloged and shelved in a university library.
(D) A disclosure publicly posted on the INTERNET, but containing no publication or retrieval date.
(E) Applicant’s labeling of one of the figures in the drawings submitted with his application as prior art.
ANSWER: (D). See MPEP § 2128 under the subheading “Date of Availability,” of the
heading “Electronic Publications As Prior Art.”
(A) is wrong. See MPEP § 2129 under the heading “A Jepson Claim Results In An Implied Admission That Preamble Is Prior Art.”
(B) is wrong. See MPEP § 2128.02. A journal article or other publication becomes available as prior art on date it is received by at least one member of the public.
(C) is wrong. See MPEP § 2128.01 under the heading “A Thesis Placed In A University Library May Be Prior Art If Sufficiently Accessible To The Public.”
(E) is wrong. See In re Nomiya, 184 USPQ 607, 610 (CCPA 1975); 35 U.S.C. § 102(d); MPEP § 2129 under the heading “Admissions By Applicant Constitute Prior Art.”
The following information relevant to the prior art issues raised by this question and the Patent Office’s “Model Answer” are worth noting.
i.	Concerning the preamble of a Jepson claim, the subject of Answer Option (A), while it is correct that the recitation in the preamble is impliedly admitted to be prior art, the implication may be overcome by a credible explanation as to why the applicant used the Jepson format and did not intend it to be an admission of prior art. As the CCPA said, “a finding of obviousness should not be based on an implied admission erroneously creating imaginary prior art.” In re Ehrreich, 590 F.2d 902, 909-910 (1979).
ii.	With regard to Answer Option (C), it is an overstatement to say that “a doctoral thesis indexed, cataloged and shelved in a university library,” without more, constitutes prior art. While the doctoral thesis in In re Hall, 781 F.2d 897, 909-910 (1986) was held to be prior art on the factual record there established, the court took pains to note that the proponent of the document asserted to be prior art “must show that prior to the critical date the reference was sufficiently accessible, at least to the public interested in the art, so that such a one could make the claimed invention without further research or experimentation.” Three years later the court held in In re Cronyn, 890 F.2d 1158, (1989), that the theses there in issue did not qualify as prior art “because they had not been either cataloged or indexed in a meaningful way.” Specifically, “the only research aid was the student’s name, which, of course, bears no relationship to the subject of the student’s thesis.” In short, then, for a thesis in a library to be a “printed publication,” it must be both cataloged or indexed by subject matter and shelved so as to be accessible to the interested public.
iii.	The fact that Answer Option (C) was considered by the Patent Office to be a correct statement of the law highlights the importance of carefully considering all answer options before selecting what the Patent Office considers to be “the most correct” answer. Although Answer Option (C) is an incomplete statement, and to that extent incorrect, it is less incorrect than Answer Option (D), which is the only one that would have received credit. (D), an internet posting with no indication of a date on or by which it was posted cannot be considered to be prior art.
Posted in Bar Review Course | Tagged Patent Bar Review Question of the Week, Paul Gardner | 6 Comments
on June 18, 2010 at 3:00 pm Steven Weinrieb
Query – why would the Internet posting, at least as of the date it is posted on the Internet, not be considered prior art? Let’s assume that an article appears on the internet disclosing a particular technology, let’s assume further that people all around the globe print it out for further study, their print-outs will contain the date of the print-out, and if I file an application, on the technology disclosed, for example, six months hence, why is the Internet posting not considered prior art to my application?
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on June 24, 2010 at 3:18 pm cjagalla
It’s my understanding that the Internet posting would not be considered prior art specifically because it “[contained] no publication or retrieval date.”
The print-out, as you mentioned, may be considered as a separate matter, wherein proof that the date was correct may come into play.
The question, as stated, only says that the date is not available. This limitation comes up often in Internet searching, although there are certain ways to “retrodate” (my slang) the Internet posting such as Archive.org (the Wayback Machine).