Posts Tagged: "NFC Tech."

Federal Circuit applies ‘rule of reason’ to find inventor testimony credible in IPR

The Court found the Board’s reliance on Woodland Trust to be “misplaced” because in that case there had been continued public use for a period of a decade without any documentary evidence to support conception. To the contrary, on the facts presented here there was some documentation over the period of several months. Furthermore, that documentation took place nearly twenty years ago, which according to the Court wrote made this situation far closer to Loral Fairchild Corp. v. Matsushita Electric, 266 F.3d 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2001). In Loral Fairchild the Court previously “forgave the inventor’s inability ‘to submit documents showing production test results, considering that the events at issue occurred almost 30 years ago’” — when the inventor’s account was otherwise adequately corroborated. Additionally, there was no one else suggested by either party as the actual inventor.