Opinion ID: 210805
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Festival Market Sales

Text: 12 Much of the debate in this case centers on the import of sales made at the Festival Market mall in Lexington, Kentucky, more than a year before DDI filed its patent application. Sales made more than one year before the patent's priority date implicate the on-sale bar of 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). For the '156 patent, this critical date is March 6, 1988. Starting on July 24, 1987, Jones sold cryogenically-prepared, largely beaded ice cream at the Festival Market. During Jones's time at Festival Market, which lasted at least until July 29th, over 800 customers purchased his beaded ice cream and others received free samples. The customers were permitted to leave with the product and were not restricted by any kind of confidentiality agreement. Jones later testified that his main goal at the Festival Market was to get . . . test-marketing information and not to further develop technical aspects of his product such as particular temperature ranges for storage and service. 13 It is undisputed that the Festival Market sales were never disclosed to the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) during prosecution of the '156 patent. The declaration of commercial success which ultimately persuaded the examiner to grant the patent contained a sworn statement by Jones that [t]he initial sales were in March of 1988, which was on or after the critical date. 14 Jones testified that at Festival Market he only practiced the first three steps of the claimed method, not the storing, bringing, or serving steps. He testified that he considered the evidence of what had happened at Festival Market to be irrelevant to patentability. The attorney who prosecuted the '156 patent, Warren Schickli, testified that he considered the sales to have been experimental since the process as practiced at Festival Market could not be feasibly commercially exploited. He also testified that the Festival Market ice cream was not sold for direct consumption under the meaning of Claim 1, because the ice cream was too cold to eat comfortably when initially given to the consumer.