Court Opinion

ID: 9489322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:12:00.206101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:27.632473
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This case relates to the status as “public use” of unpublished information used for research purposes by a person who was completely independent of the inventor of the patent-in-suit. Can such private laboratory research use, if it occurs after a laboratory “reduction to practice,” serve as an invalidating “public use” bar to the patented invention of another? The panel majority so holds.
The panel majority holds that since the reduction to practice of the similar device assertedly occurred more than a year before the filing date of the patent in suit, the ensuing laboratory use of that device was a “public use” and a bar under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). This new rule of law, that unpublished laboratory use after a reduction to practice is a public use, creates a new and mischievous category of “secret” prior art. I respectfully dissent from the court’s ruling, for it is contrary to, and misapplies, the law of 35 U.S.C. § 102.
DISCUSSION
The inventor of the patent-in-suit is Herbert Cullis; the patent is assigned to Baxter. The now-invalidating centrifuge was designed by Dr. Yoichiro Ito, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, at the request of another scientist, Dr. Jacques Suaudeau, who wanted a centrifuge that would not damage blood platelets for use during heart operations. After some modifications of Ito’s design Dr. Suaudeau used the centrifuge in his research, taking it with him to continue his research at Massachusetts General Hospital. There was no cited use outside of the activity in Dr. Suaudeau’s laboratory. The Ito device was later made the subject of a patent application, and apparently after an interference with certain aspects of the Cullis application, a patent was granted to Ito.
The panel majority holds that the Ito device was in “public use” as soon as the Ito centrifuge was reduced to practice. Assuming that there was an actual reduction to practice before the critical date — a strongly challenged assumption1 — the patent statute and precedent do not elevate private laboratory use after a reduction to practice to “public use” under § 102(b). When the public use is unknown and unknowable information in the possession of third persons, 35 U.S.C. § 102 accommodates such “secret pri- or art” only in the limited circumstances of § 102(e).
The issue here is not that of an Ito/Suau-deau personal defense as a prior user, a matter of current discussion among policymakers. On the panel majority’s ruling it is irrelevant whether Cullis or Ito was the first inventor, for the Cullis patent is now held to be barred by the Suaudeau laboratory use of the Ito device, before the date of any reference publication or the filing date of any patent application. This is not a correct reading of the law. Suaudeau’s use in his laboratory did not become a public use under *1062§ 102(b) as soon as the Ito centrifuge was reduced to practice. Cf. W.L. Gore & Assoc., Inc. v. Garlock Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1550, 220 USPQ 303, 310 (Fed.Cir.1983) (a third person’s secret commercial activity, more than one year before the patent application of another, is not a § 102(b) bar to the patent of another), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851, 105 S.Ct. 172, 83 L.Ed.2d 107 (1984).
35 U.S.C. § 102(a), (b)
The Ito device was described in a scientific publication, but the publication was not cited as prior art against the Cullis patent, apparently because of the publication date. See In re Mulder, 716 F.2d 1542, 1543 219 USPQ 189, 192 (Fed.Cir.1983). The panel majority does not rely on any publication or patent as a prior art reference, but on the underlying laboratory development. This use of unknown, private laboratory work to create a new bar to patentability as of the date of laboratory reduction to practice is a distortion of the law and policy set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 102. Sections 102(a) and (b) establish that prior art is prior knowledge that meets specified requirements. This new category of internal laboratory use is immune to the most painstaking documentary search. The court thus produces, a perpetual cloud on any issued patent, defeating the objective standards and policy considerations embodied in the § 102 definitions of prior art.
Precedent does not support the panel majority’s ruling. For example, in In re Smith, 714 F.2d 1127, 218 USPQ 976 (Fed.Cir.1983), relied on by the majority and by the district court, it was held that public testing of the invention with over two hundred consumers was commercial activity and was a bar under § 102(b). It is an unwarranted leap from the context of Smith to the private laboratory use that here occurred. It is incorrect to hold that all use after reduction to practice is ipso facto a public use, even when conducted in a private laboratory.
35 U.S.C. § 102(e)
Heretofore, § 102(e) was the only source of so-called “secret prior art”: the patent text remains secret while the patent application is pending, but after the patent is issued its subject matter is deemed to be prior art as of its filing date.2 See Hazeltine Research v. Brenner, 382 U.S. 252, 254-65, 86 S.Ct. 335, 337-38, 15 L.Ed.2d 304, 147 USPQ 429, 431 (1965) (under § 102(e) a patent is a reference as of its filing date, although its existence is not known until it issues). Thus the term “secret prior art” is used for prior art under § 102(e). This law reflects a careful balancing of public policies, for it is an exception to the rule that “prior art” is that which is available to the public. Id.
This retroactive effect does not reach back to the underlying research or to the date of reduction to practice of the reference patented invention. See § 102(e) (the patent applicant may show that his invention predates the filing date of the reference patent). It is irrelevant, as well as usually unknown, when the invention of the reference patent was reduced to practice. Such information is not discemable from the issued patent. Thus the court’s ruling today adds an omnipresent pitfall to the complexities of the patent system.
35 U.S.C. § 102(c), (f)
There is no issue raised of abandonment under § 102(c) or derivation under § 102(f). My concern, as I have stressed, is that there is now created a new source of unknown and unknowable grounds of invalidity.
35 U.S.C. § 102(g)
Cullis and Ito were engaged in an interference proceeding in the PTO, in which Ito prevailed. Elaborate rules and extensive precedent govern the determination of reduction to practice under § 102(g). See, e.g., Schendel v. Curtis, 83 F.3d 1399, 38 USPQ2d 1743 (Fed.Cir.1996) (illustrating rigorous requirements for reduction to practice in patent interferences). Today’s acquiescence in Suaudeau’s purported reduction to practice, *1063based on credibility determinations and other findings unwarranted in a summary proceeding, is unburdened by the usual rigors of this determination.
The record does not explain the relationship between the Ito patent, the lost counts of the interference, and the patent in suit. However, it is not irrelevant that the PTO issued the Cullis patent despite the Ito patent, and that the information that is deemed invalidating by the panel majority was not so viewed by the PTO. The panel majority’s holding today is dramatically new law. Indeed, the panel majority suggests that since Suaudeau’s use after reduction to practice is public use, the Ito patent is also invalid. Ito, not a party to this case, had no chance to dispute this result.
SUMMARY
It is incorrect to interpret 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) to mean that laboratory use after a reduction to practice is a “public use,” and thus a bar against any patent application filed, by anyone, more than a year thereafter. Section 102(b) was not intended to add to the bars based on information not published or publicly known or otherwise within the definition of prior art. A non-public use does not become a public use after a reduction to practice. It is simply incorrect to interpret the laboratory use in this case as a statutory bar to a patent. I can discern no benefit to society, or to the interest of justice, in this new unreliability of the patent grant.

. This fact should not have been decided adversely to Baxter on summary judgment. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2509-10, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

. 35 U.S.C. § 102 A person shall be entitled to a patent unless—
(e) the invention was described in a patent granted on an application for patent by another filed in the United States before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, ...