Court Opinion

ID: 9491538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:16:48.382571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:48.147805
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment that claims 1 and 9 of the ’262 patent are invalid on the ground of obviousness, in view of the references to Deyerle and McBride. However, the panel majority has erred in its treatment, as “anticipating” prior art under section 102(b), of Dr. Tronzo’s own British counterpart of his United States parent application. The disclosure in the British patent is identical to that of the earlier-filed United States parent application; nonetheless, the panel majority treats the British patent as invalidating prior art. However, the patentee is entitled to the benefit of the prior filing of the parent United States application for the subject matter contained therein. Without the improperly relied-upon British counterpart, the rejection based on “anticipation” can not stand.
A continuation-in-part application relates back to its parent’s filing date for the common subject matter. Since the intervening publication of the common subject matter is antedated by the United States parent application, the British counterpart is neither an “anticipating” reference nor a statutory bar against the continuation-in-part application. The publication of the British counterpart of Dr. Tronzo’s parent application does not deprive him of the benefit of the filing date of the parent application for the subject matter of the parent application.
The contrary holding of the panel majority will have a dramatic adverse effect on continuation-in-part practice. The ruling that the disclosure in an inventor’s parent application becomes prior art against a continuation-in-part application, when it is published before the filing of the continuation-in-part application, is a new and pernicious burden on inventors who seek early entry into the patent system while continuing to investigate the subject of their invention.
The issue of relating back to a parent filing date is different from the issue of constructive reduction to practice of generic claims in the continuation-in-part. There is no issue in this ease of determining priority of invention. The issue is whether a patentee can rely on the filing of subject matter in a parent application in order to predate the later publication of that subject matter. According to the court’s ruling today, the patentee loses the entire benefit of that earlier filing whenever a continuation-in-part is filed with additional data and broadened claims based in part on that data. That is, the patentee’s own prior disclosure now becomes prior art against him. That is new, and incorrect, law. A later publication can not “anticipate” what is already on file; to the contrary, the later publication is removed as a reference by the identical earlier filing in the United States.
The purpose of the continuation-in-part is to permit an applicant to add new information and data, while retaining the benefit of the original filing date for what was originally filed. Many applicants obtain foreign patents based on the original filing, because of the first-to-file rule in foreign countries and the comity rules of the Paris Convention; some countries publish patents within a few months of their filing. With the court’s holding today, such foreign patents are a statutory bar if the continuation-in-part is filed more than a year after the publication of the foreign counterpart. Thus the patentee is deprived of the benefit of the earlier filing in the United States, whenever new matter and broader claims are added by continuation-in-part. This destruction of the continuation-in-part practice is contrary to law and to the public interest. Thus I must, respectfully, *1163dissent from the reasoning relied on by the panel majority.