Posts Tagged: "novelty"

Logically, if the application does not describe an invention in terms that allows one skilled in the art to make and use it, then the Patent Office should not have sufficient information to suggest that the application is not novel or obvious. In order to determine something is not novel or obvious you first have to know what it is. I have no objection to the Patent Office putting a 35 U.S.C. § 112 (a) and novelty/obviousness rejection in the same Office Action, where the PTO explains that to the best of their understanding of the invention it would not be novel or obvious for the following reasons.

While the search for prior art won’t likely be impacted, the value of the prior art located will be dramatically impacted according to Ken Hattori, partner in the Washington, D.C. firm of Westerman, Hattori, Daniels & Adrian, LLP. “US patents with a foreign priority claim will become tremendously stronger as prior art,” says Hattori. “The subject matter disclosed in the US patent has an effectively filed date as priority date since the Hilmer doctrine is eliminated.” This is significant because “there will be no Section 112 requirement for the description of the subject matter disclosed in the foreign specification. Thus, the subject matter in a prior art US patent or application will go back to the foreign filing date as a reference.”

Unfortunately, the patentability requirements are frequently misunderstood, including by the United States Supreme Court. For many who are not well versed in patent law one of the reasons it can be confusing when considering patentability is due to the fact that the first of the patentability requirements asks whether the invention exhibits patentable subject matter. This is sometimes phrased in terms of patent eligibility, which leads the many anti-patent zealots and other patent neophytes to erroneously conclude that if an invention is patent eligible then a patent issues. Nothing could be further from the truth, but those who hate the patent system aren’t exactly concerned with facts or reality. So what is required for an invention to be patented?

The effort to shoehorn foreign patent priority concepts and torture a well-developed 200 year-old American patent system that has a proven record as the best in the world into foreign structures that are inconsistent with the American Constitution and its laws is a futile effort that would likely be met with successful challenge on constitutional grounds. The illusory “harmonization” goal with no demonstrated tangible benefits compared to the existing system does not justify embarking on a risky legal adventure that will destabilize the American patent system and will doom it to decades of economically taxing legal uncertainty.

The United States Constitution grants to the Congress the power to grant patents; this power residing in the Congress is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8. Unlike most of the enumerated powers granted to Congress in the Constitution, the Intellectual Property Clause is a qualified grant of power, which does limit Congressional discretion in significant ways. The Congress does not have free reign to decide that patents should be easily or freely given, but rather must limit their exercise of power to the dictates of the clause itself. See Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U.S. 141, 146 (1989). See also Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1, 5 (1966) (“The clause is both a grant of power and a limitation. This qualified authority, unlike the power often exercised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the English Crown, is limited to the promotion of advances in the ‘useful arts.’”).

In order to have a patentable business method it is necessary for the invention to accomplish some practical application. In other words, in order for a business method to be patentable it must produce a “useful, concrete and tangible result.” Although the United States Supreme Court did away with that test when it issued its decision in Bilski v. Kappos, it is still nevertheless illustrative and the best test that is out there. If you really understand what Judge Rich meant by “useful, concrete and tangible result” you come to the inescapable conclusion that it is the appropriate test and if you really target the description of the invention to satisfy the test you will have something that is patentable under the Supreme Court Bilski v. Kappos test and the USPTO guidelines that have followed.

I frequently am told by inventors that they have searched the marketplace and cannot find anything like their invention. I am also frequently told that they have done a patent search and cannot find anything that remotely resembles what they have come up with. While there are many reasons for not finding prior art, just because you do not find prior art does not mean that there is no prior art that needs to be considered. In fact, it would be extremely rare (if not completely impossible) for there to be an invention that does not have any relevant prior art. Said another way, unless you have invented something on the level of an Einstein-type invention there is prior art. Even the greatest American inventor, Thomas Edison, faced prior art for the vast majority of his inventions.

I continually preach to inventors the need to follow what I call a “business responsible” approach, which is really just my way of counseling inventors to remember that the goal is to not only invent but to hopefully make some money. Truthfully, the goal is to make more money than what has been invested, which is how the United States Congress defined “success” in the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999. Odds of being successful with one of your inventions increase dramatically if you engage in some simple steps to ensure you are not investing time and money on an invention that has little promise.

Earlier this week Apple, Inc. had three patent application publish on what most would consider strange, overbroad and/or dubious inventions. The patents largely follow the same formula, the drawings are remarkably similar, and all relate back to provisional patents filed at the end of January 2009. Many will ridicule these patent applications, and given that obviousness is now about common sense thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in KSR v. Teleflex I think rightly so. I find it hard to believe that there would not be prior art located that dates back to before January 2009 that will present massive difficulties for Apple.

There is absolutely no reason why we cannot change from a first to invent system to a first inventor to file system that would still retain a real and substantial grace period and still retain the right for patent applicants to swear behind references to demonstrate an earlier date of invention, at least with respect to pieces of prior art that are not the progeny of earlier filed patent applications. So the currently proposed revisions to 102 need to be amended prior to passage of S. 515. It should define the term “disclosure,” do away with “otherwise available” under proposed 102(a) and retain the grace period relative to third party actions.

Everyone views the world through a prism, and the prism I look through is different than the prism others look through.  That should hardly come as a surprise given that we each find ourselves at any point in time being where we are as a result of the journey we have taken.  It is, therefore, not surprising that those who…