Opinion ID: 780687
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Conception and Reduction to Practice

Text: 31 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 therefore to be applied in practice.' Kridl v. McCormick, 105 F.3d 1446, 1449, 41 USPQ2d 1686, 1689 (Fed.Cir.1997) (citations omitted). A conception must encompass all limitations of the claimed invention, see id., and is complete only when the idea is so clearly defined in the inventor's mind that only ordinary skill would be necessary to reduce the invention to practice, without extensive research or experimentation, Burroughs Wellcome Co. v. Barr Labs. Inc., 40 F.3d 1223, 1228, 32 USPQ2d 1915, 1919 (Fed.Cir.1994). 32 Priority of invention and its constituent issues of conception and reduction to practice are questions of law predicated on subsidiary factual findings. Brown, 276 F.3d at 1332, 61 USPQ2d at 1238; Hitzeman v. Rutter, 243 F.3d 1345, 1353, 58 USPQ2d 1161, 1166 (Fed.Cir.2001). Accordingly, we review de novo the Board's legal conclusions with respect to priority, conception, and reduction to practice, 5 U.S.C. § 706 (2000); Brown, 276 F.3d at 1332, 61 USPQ2d at 1238; Hitzeman, 243 F.3d at 1353-54, 58 USPQ2d at 1166-67, and we review factual findings by the Board for substantial evidence, Dickinson v. Zurko, 527 U.S. 150, 119 S.Ct. 1816, 144 L.Ed.2d 143 (1999); In re Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 1315, 53 USPQ2d 1769, 1775 (Fed.Cir.2000). 33 A junior party whose effective filing date is earlier than the date the senior party's patent issued and who is seeking a determination of priority must demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence either reduction to practice before the senior party's priority date, or prior conception coupled with reasonable diligence in reducing the invention to practice from a time just prior to the senior party's entry into the field to the junior party's own reduction to practice. 35 U.S.C. § 102(g) (2000); Griffin v. Bertina, 285 F.3d 1029, 1032, 62 USPQ2d 1431, 1433 (Fed.Cir. 2002); Mahurkar v. C.R. Bard, Inc., 79 F.3d 1572, 1577, 38 USPQ2d 1288, 1290 (Fed.Cir.1996). 34 It is well established that when a party seeks to prove conception via the oral testimony of a putative inventor, the party must proffer evidence corroborating that testimony. See Mahurkar, 79 F.3d at 1577, 38 USPQ2d at 1290; Price v. Symsek, 988 F.2d 1187, 1194, 26 USPQ2d 1031, 1036 (Fed.Cir.1993). That rule addresses the concern that a party claiming inventorship might be tempted to describe his actions in an unjustifiably self-serving manner in order to obtain a patent or to maintain an existing patent. See Eibel Process Co. v. Minn. & Ont. Paper Co., 261 U.S. 45, 60, 43 S.Ct. 322, 67 L.Ed. 523 (1923); Kridl, 105 F.3d at 1450, 41 USPQ2d at 1689 (The tribunal must also bear in mind the purpose of corroboration, which is to prevent fraud, by providing independent confirmation of the inventor's testimony.); Price, 988 F.2d at 1194-95, 26 USPQ2d at 1036-37. There is no particular formula that an inventor must follow in providing corroboration of his testimony of conception. See Kridl, 105 F.3d at 1450, 41 USPQ2d at 1689. Rather, whether a putative inventor's testimony has been sufficiently corroborated is determined by a rule of reason analysis, in which an evaluation of all pertinent evidence must be made so that a sound determination of the credibility of the inventor's story may be reached. Price, 988 F.2d at 1195, 26 USPQ2d 1031 at 1037. However, that rule of reason analysis does not alter the requirement of corroboration of an inventor's testimony. Brown, 276 F.3d at 1335. Evidence of the inventive facts must not rest alone on the testimony of the inventor himself. Cooper v. Goldfarb, 154 F.3d 1321, 1330, 47 USPQ2d 1896, 1903 (Fed.Cir.1998). 35 Singh argues that the Board did not consider the totality of the corroborative evidence establishing Singh's conception, but only considered individual pieces of evidence in total isolation from one another. Specifically, Singh argues that his November 24, 1982 notebook entry and his ordering of the specific 24-mer oligonucleotide ultimately used to carry out the loop deletion mutagenesis method (in February 1983) establish that he had a definite and permanent idea of the structure of a DNA construct within the count and of an operative way of making it prior to Brake 1's filing date. 36 We disagree. First, as we stated in our earlier opinion, Singh, 222 F.3d at 1368, 55 USPQ2d at 1677, the Board correctly held as a matter of law that Singh failed to prove that he conceived the claimed construct prior to December 1, 1982. In his November 24, 1982 notebook entry, Singh identified the twenty-four nucleotides encoding the eight extraneous amino acids present in the IFN-D generated by the p60 DNA construct, labeling them with the notation, sequence to be removed. He also identified in that entry the twelve nucleotides immediately upstream and the twelve nucleotides immediately downstream from those twenty-four, i.e., the flanking segments. Accordingly, he may have articulated in that entry the problem to be solved, namely, the need to eliminate the twenty-four nucleotides encoding the extraneous amino acids. Nonetheless, substantial evidence supports the Board's finding that that entry alone was insufficient to corroborate Singh's testimony. Even if the entry expressed the problem, it did not provide the solution. See Brake, Paper No. 164 at 22-24. The Board's key findings in this regard, both of which are supported by substantial evidence in the notebook entry itself, are: (1) that a linear 24-mer other than the one necessary to accomplish the deletion was first ordered, and (2) that the order was canceled the same day, with a notation will do in a different way and w/o changing codons. Id. at 23-24. 37 Secondly, as noted above, the 24-mer sequence that Singh initially ordered on November 24, 1982, was not identical to the nucleotides of the flanking sequences. Instead, he included several preferred codons, casting doubt on the accuracy of Singh's statement that he ordered that 24-mer [i]n order to remove this sequence by oligonucleotide deletion mutagenesis. While it remains unclear exactly what Singh planned to do on November 24, 1982, his identification of preferred codons suggests to us that his plans may not have included the use of loop deletion mutagenesis. 38 The Board duly considered the fact that the 24-mer ordered by Singh on December 1, 1982, was indeed complementary to the four codons on each side of the sequence Singh allegedly desired to delete. See, e.g., Brake, Paper No. 199 at 13-14, 19, 58-59, 77-78. The Board also reviewed Singh's notebook pages purporting to demonstrate conception. The Board concluded, and we agree, that Singh's entire case for conception rests on the order of a 24-mer and an uncorroborated notation in a corner of Dr. Singh's notebook. Id. at 84. 39 There is nothing in Singh's notebook that corroborates his testimony that the November 24, December 1, and December 21 entries were meant to be read together. Even viewing all of these entries together, however, we find that the sum falls short of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that Singh had a definite and permanent idea of an operative method of making the DNA construct of the count prior to Brake 1's filing date. As the Board observed, the notebook entries do not provide any protocol or outline of the loop deletion mutagenesis procedure: At best, the notation states a goal which Dr. Singh hopes to achieve; i.e., an in-frame deletion of the á pro-IFN-D junction. Id. at 61. Adelman et al., In Vitro Deletional Mutagenesis for Bacterial Production of the 20,000-Dalton Form of Human Pituitary Growth Hormone, 2 DNA 183 (1983), which described the loop deletion mutagenesis procedure, also described using oligonucleotides complementary to nucleotide sequences flanking codons to be deleted as probes for identifying plasmids from which the codons had been deleted. Id. at 188. We find it no less plausible that Singh was ordering the 24-mer for use as a probe than it was that he was ordering it for use in the loop deletion mutagenesis procedure. Indeed, Singh has pointed to no evidence in the record in support of his assertion that loop deletion mutagenesis was developed at Genentech in late 1982 (the Adelman et al. paper was published in 1983), let alone that Dr. Singh knew of any such developments prior to Brake 1's filing date. The burden was on Singh to prove that he as the inventor had a definite and permanent idea of how to make the construct. See Coleman v. Dines, 754 F.2d 353, 360, 224 USPQ 857, 863 (Fed.Cir. 1985). That he did not do. 40 Finally, we address Singh's argument set forth in his brief that, [w]ith respect to the issue of conception, this Court previously made specific findings ... that Singh articulated a specific plan to design the claimed construct by the loop deletion method on November 24, 1982. That statement is a mischaracterization of our earlier opinion, in which we simply said that the Board needed to consider the totality of the evidence, including evidence of Singh's identification of the sequence to be removed and the twelve nucleotides immediately upstream and downstream from this sequence, as well as of his ordering of a 24-mer identical to the sequences flanking the undesired sequence. We are satisfied that the Board has done so. 41 Thus, after review of the record evidence in light of the proper legal standards, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the Board's key finding that no evidence links the nucleotide Singh ordered on December 1, 1982, with a plan to design the claimed construct prior to January 12, 1983. 42 Because we find that Singh did not meet his burden of demonstrating conception prior to Brake 1's filing date by a preponderance of the evidence, we need not address Singh's arguments regarding reduction to practice. However, we note the Board's finding that, apart from attorney argument, Singh's evidence of diligence primarily consists of various pages from Dr. Singh's laboratory notebook which are (i) unexplained as to content and relevance to the invention of the Count, and (ii) uncorroborated. Brake, Paper No. 199 at 88. We agree that Singh's activities completed on December 20, 1982, were the only relevant, corroborated activities performed by Singh prior to Brake 1's January 12, 1983, filing date, and, as a result, Singh failed to prove reasonable diligence toward reduction to practice by a preponderance of the evidence.