Opinion ID: 807210
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Domestic Disclosure Under Scott

Text: The American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 (“AIPA”) divided § 102(g) into subsections (1) and (2), eliminating the “made in this country” requirement under subsection (1) governing interferences, and retaining the “made in this country” requirement under subsection (2) governing prior invention generally. The post-AIPA version of § 102(g), which governs this appeal, provides in pertinent part: A person shall be entitled to a patent unless: ... (g)(1) during the course of an interference con- ducted under section 135 or section 291, another inventor involved therein establishes . . . that before such person’s invention thereof the invention was made by such other inventor and not aban- doned, suppressed, or concealed, or (2) before such person’s invention thereof, the invention was made in this country by another inventor who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it. . . . 35 U.S.C. § 102(g) (2006) (emphasis added). Prior to the passage of the AIPA, § 102(g) did not distinguish interferences from prior invention generally, and provided that a person shall be entitled to a patent unless “before the applicant’s invention thereof the invention was made in this country by another who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it.” § 102(g) (1994) (emphasis added). Applying the pre-AIPA version of § 102(g) in an interference case, this court stated in Scott v. Koyama, 281 F.3d 1243 (Fed. Cir. 2001), that “the inventor of an invention of foreign origin may rely on the date that the invention was disclosed in the United States[] as a conception 10 AMKOR TECH v. ITC date for priority purposes.” Id. at 1247 (citing Thomas v. Reese, 1880 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 196, 198 (“If [an inventor], having conceived [the invention] and reduced it to practice in a foreign country . . . communicates it to an agent in the United States for the purpose of obtaining letters patent or of introducing it to public use in the United States, he may, in an interference, carry the date of his invention back to the day in which it was fully disclosed to such agent in the United States.”)). Because nothing in the legislative history indicates that Congress attempted to abandon this court’s interpretation of the “made in this country” language of the pre-AIPA version of § 102(g) when it amended the statute and retained the language in § 102(g)(2), this court holds that the court’s interpretation of this language in Scott governs this noninterference, prior invention case under § 102(g)(2). See Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 581 (1978) (“[W]here . . . Congress adopts a new law incorporating sections of a prior law, Congress normally can be presumed to have had knowledge of the interpretation given to the incorporated law, at least insofar as it affects the new statute.”). This court’s interpretation of the “made in this country” language of § 102(g) (1994) in Scott is consistent with how both parties in this appeal and district courts have interpreted the “made in this country” language of § 102(g)(2) (2006) as it applies to prior invention, outside of the interference context. See Solvay S.A. v. Honeywell Specialty Materials LLC, 827 F. Supp. 2d 358, 363-64 (D. Del. 2011) (“[N]o authority indicat[es] that the language of § 102(g)(2) should be interpreted differently than that same language had been interpreted before the 1999 amendment.”), on remand from 622 F.3d 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2010); Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co., 560 F. Supp. 2d 835, 865 n.26 (N.D. Cal. 2008) (“[F]or an invention conceived outside the United States, the date of conception for purposes of priority for a United States patent is the date the invention is first reported to the AMKOR TECH v. ITC 11 inventor’s agent within the United States.” (citing Scott, 281 F.3d at 1247)).