Our Mother’s are indeed remembered in the patent collection. See, for example, U.S. Patent No. 5,906,063 on a Novelty Greeting Card:

Also U.S. Patent No. 1,792,572:

The inventor of new technology has two choices for protection: patents or trade secrets.  They are generally mutually exclusive, because the disclosure requirements to obtain a valid patent, or inconsistent with the secrecy needed to have a protectable trade secret.  For most inventions, the choice is easy.  Because trade secrets only last while the invention is secret, they are not good protection for inventions that are revealed to the public when the invention is commercialized.  However, for inventions that are not disclosed by commercialization — typically inventions related to the manufacture of the product like recipes, manufacturing processes, and manufacturing equipment – trade secret protection may be a reasonable choice.  It is hard to detect infringement of a patent these types of patents inventions, so keeping the inventions out of the hands of competitors by keeping them secret may offer the best protection.

However, trade secrets have a critical weakness – the loss of secrecy destroys them.  Thus while trade secrets have a potentially infinite life, their life can also be disappointingly brief if the secrecy is lost  or if the it is independently developed.  But independent creation has another possible consequence – the second inventor might decide to patent the invention, and enforce it against the first inventor who decided to keep it a trade secret.

The first inventor could be vulnerable, as its activities may not constitute “prior art” that can be used to challenge the second inventor’s patent.  However the AIA created a prior user defense in 35 USC 273, which was tailor-made for this circumstance.  The defense applies to a patent on a process, or a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter used in manufacturing or other commercial process.  The defense requires that the prior user, (1) acting in good faith, (2) commercially used in the invention, (3) in the United States, (4) either in connection with an internal commercial use or a sale or transfer, (5) at least one year before the earlier of the patent filing date or first public disclosure.

The first inventor has the burden of proof, and thus should keep records sufficient to be able to established the defense.  The defense is also personal, and can only be asserted by the person who performed or directed the performance of the commercial use, or by an entity that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with such person.  The defense can be transferred, but only ancillary and subordinate part of a good-faith assignment or transfer for other reasons of the entire enterprise or line of business to which the defense relates.  Moreover, when transferred, the defense is limited to the uses at sides where the invention was used before the later of the effective filing date of the claimed invention or the date of the assignment or transfer of such enterprise or line of business.

Of course asserting the prior user defense takes fortitude, be it is basically conceding infringement, and depending on the circumstances, willful infringement if the defense does not succeed.  Further, there are a number of limitations that make the prior use defense unreliable:

• It only applies to  patents issued on applications filed after September 16, 2011, and does not apply to patents on inventions made, owned or subject to an obligation of assignment to either an institution of higher education or a technology transfer organization (35 USC 273(e)(5)). It must be proven by clear and convincing evidence. 35 USC 273(b).
• The prior use must be continuous.  35 USC 273(e)(4).
• The case will be deemed exception for purposes of an award of attorneys’ fees if the defense is asserted without a reasonable basis. 35 USC 273(f).
• The defense is not a general license, but is limited to the prior commercial use, and improvements not covered by the claims. 35 USC 273(e)(3). The defense does not invalidate the patent.  35 USC 273(g).
• The defense does not invalidate the patent.  35 USC 273(g).

For these reasons, a prior inventor who decides to rely on trade secret protection for an invention may wish to set up a invalidity defense should a second inventor come along and get a patent.  The first inventor might do so by making a public disclosure of just enough information to make the invention unpatentable without revealing the trade secret itself.  This disclosure might prevent a third party patent from issuing, or if it did issue, could be used to invalidate it. Such a strategy is fraught with uncertainty in striking the balance of invalidating subsequent patents while not disclosing enough to destroy the trade secret.

Another strategy might be to leverage the Supreme Court decision in Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., and arrange for a non-disclosing sale of the invention.  Since it should not make a difference who is the buyer and who is the seller, the first inventor could contract to buy the invention from a vendor bound by a confidentiality agreement.  Should a patent issue to a third party, this non-disclosing sale would be prior art as long as it occurred before the third party filed its patent application.  (Note that none of the exceptions in 102(b) appear to apply to a non-disclosing sale.).

It’s amusing to contemplate even more devious ways to hide prior art in plain sight, maintaining relative confidentiality while setting up a prior art road block to third party patents. Although such gamesmanship may not guarantee the desired result.  For example, in In re Wyer, 655 F.2d 221 (C.C.P.A. 1981), a patent application was filed with the Australian Patent Office, resulting in the publication of a printed abstract of the application, and microfilm copies being retained by the Australian Patent Office, available for the public to view and copy.  As a result, the application was found to be a prior art printed publication by the Federal Circuit’s predecessor, the CCPA.

In In re Hall, 781 F.2d 897 (Fed. Cir. 1986), a dissertation was submitted to the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Freiburg University in Germany, indexed in a special dissertations catalog which was part of the general users’ catalog, and stored in the stacks in a special dissertation section.  As a result, the dissertation was found to be a prior art printed publication by the Federal Circuit.

In Mazzari v. Rogan, 323 F.3d 1000 (Fed. Cir. 2003) , a report was indexed, cataloged, and available to the public at the Ontario Power Generation Resource Center.  Another report was written in German, but also available at a library.  The court simply held, with respect to the German reference, that a publication printed in a foreign country can act as a statutory bar.  As a result, the report was found to be a prior art printed publication by the Federal Circuit.

In re Klopfenstein, 380 F.3d 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2004), a fourteen-slide presentation was printed and pasted onto poster boards and displayed continuously for two and a half days at an American Association of Cereal Chemists meeting, and then put on display for less than a day at an Agriculture Experiment Station at Kansas State University. As a result, the presentation was found to be a prior art printed publication by the Federal Circuit.

Finally, in Bruckelmyer v. Ground Heaters, Inc., 445 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2006), a Canadian patent application included two figures that were cancelled during prosecution and not included in the patent that issued from the application.  The application, including the two cancelled drawings, was found to be a prior art printed publication by the Federal Circuit.

Conclusion

Deciding to treat an invention, particularly one relating to the manufacture of a product, as a trade secret, rather than patenting it, is often a good decision.  This is particularly true, if infringements would be hard to detect. However, the inventor should consider the ability to keep the invention secret, and the likelihood that a third party might subsequently make the same invention.  The inventor should also consider the likelihood that the third party might obtain a patent, and if the prior user defense should fail, what the inventor can do to be prepared to invalidate that patent.

In Tek Global, S.R.L. v. Sealant Systems International, Inc., [2017-2507](March 29, 2019), the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s final judgment as to validity and reversed the denial of a partial new trial on validity, finding that the district court improperly restricted SSI’s efforts to present the jury with relevant evidence of invalidity.

SSI argued that had the district court allowed it to present to the jury its obviousness theory based on Eriksen in view of Bridgestone, the jury would have found the asserted claims invalid. But the district court instructed the jury that it was not permitted to conclude that Bridgestone or Eriksen, alone or in combination with one another, discloses all the requirements of the claim at issue.

The Federal Circuit found that the district erred in interpreting its prior mandate to foreclose all obviousness theories based on Eriksen in view of Bridgestone. It was the only obviousness theory at issue in the prior appeal that was foreclosed, and the district court should not have barred SSI from presenting to the jury other preserved obviousness theories based on the combination of Eriksen and Bridgestone that were not before this court in the prior appeal.

With temperatures in parts of the U.S. lower than we have seen in decades, it seems appropriate to recognize the inventors whose work help us brave this weather weather.

First and foremost is Chester Greenwood, inventor of ear muffs, whose U.S. Patent No. 188,292, issued March 13, 1877:

Our thanks should also go to Joel Craddick, whose U.S. Patent No. 1,394,810, issued October 1921, on an “Electrothermal Garment” — among the earliest electrically heated clothing.

However, inventors’ work on protecting us from the cold continues to this day, and John Elson, Kerrie Gath, Clay Maranville, and Victoria Schein, were issued U.S. Patent No. 10,143,043 on a “Heated Seat Belt.” While when I am backing out of my driveway at 1° F I will be wearing a jacket so thick that I won’t be able to tell whether or not the seat belt is warm, I can still appreciate their thinking of us.

For fifty years between 1940 and 1990, The St. Louis Post Dispatch had a section in its comics pages titled Our Own Oddities, featuring unusual things from around the St. Louis metropolitan area. There are a number of patent “oddities,” and while they may not be as astounding as a Nixon-shaped potato they are nonetheless cataloged below.

The First Patent

The first patent, as most patent attorneys know, was issued to Samuel Hopkins on July 31, 1790, on a method of making potash and pearlash. However U.S. Patent No. 1 issued to J. Ruggles on July 13, 1836, when it finally occurred to someone in the Patent Office to start numbering these things. Approximated 10,000 unnumbered patents, often call the X-series of patents were issued prior to U.S. Patent No. 1.

First Patent to a Female Inventor

The first patent to issue to a female inventors is believed to be one of the aforementioned X-series patents, No. 1041X on Weaving Straw with Silk Thread, issued to Mary Kies on May 5, 1809.

First Patent to an African-American Inventor

The first patent to issue to an African-American is believed to be one of the aforementioned X-series patents, No. 3306X on Dry Scouring of Clothes, issued to Thomas L. Jennings on March 3, 1821.

Only Patent to a President

The only patent issued to a president is U.S. Patent No. 6,469 on a Manner of Bouying Vessels, issued to Abraham Lincoln on May 22, 1849.

Shortest Patent Claim

The scope of a patent is defined by its claims, and there are a number of two-word patent claims, including Glenn Seaborg’s U.S. Patent No. 3,156,523, issued November 10, 1964, claiming: “1.  Element 95,” and his U.S. Patent No. 3,164,462, issued December 15, 1964, claiming “1.  Element 96.”

However there are in fact several patents with a one-word claim, including Lloyd H. Conover’s U.S. Patent No. 2,699,054, issued January 11, 1955, whose claim 2 simply recites “Tetracycline.” For another example, check out claims 12-19 of U.S. Patent No. 3,775,489.

Longest Patent Claim

Among the longest patent claims is one found in U.S. Patent No. 6,953,802, Beta-Amino Acid Derivatives-Inhibitors of Leukocyte Adhesion Mediated by VLA-4, it contains over 17,000 words, spanning from column 59, line 27 to column 101, line 30.

Most Claims in an Application

The record for most claims in an application is US Published Application No. 20030173072 for Forming Openings in a Hydrocarbon Containing Formation Using Magnetic Tracking. As published it contained 8,958 claims, issuing as U.S. Patent No. 6,991,045 with a more modest but still impressive 90 claims.

Most Claims in a Patent

The record for most claims in a patent is U.S. Patent No. 6,684,189 Apparatus and Method Using Front-end Network Gateways and Search Criteria for Efficient Quoting at a Remote Location, with 887. Runners up are U.S. Patent No. 5,095,054 for Polymer Compositions Containing Destructurized Starch, with just 868 claims, and U.S. Patent No. 7,096,160 System and Method for Measuring and Monitoring Wireless Network Performance in Campus and Indoor Environments, with a paltry 803 claims.

Longest Patent Application

The longest patent application is U.S. Patent Application No. US20070224201A1 for Compositions and Methods for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Tumor with 7,154 pages.

Longest Patent

The longest patent is U.S. Patent No. 6,314,440 for Pseudo Random Number Generator, with 3333 pages, 3272 of which are drawings). Slightly shorter, but much wordier is U.S. Patent No. 5,146,591 has more than one million words on 3071 pages.

Shortest Patent

U.S. Patent No. 5,081,154 for Metroprolol Succinate is one half page long (about 70 lines).

• 

Most Drawings in an Application

U.S. Patent Application No. 20070224201A1 has 6881 sheets of drawings.

Shortest Patent Term

U.S. Patent Nos. 6,211,625; 6,211,619; 6,198,228;  6,144,445; 7,604,811 (and others) had a term of “0” — each expired before it issued!

Longest Patent Term

U.S. Patent No. 6,436,135, was filed in 1974, and issued in 2002, and thus won’t expire until this year (2019), 45 years after it was filed.

Most Co-Inventors

U.S. Patent Nos. 7,013,469 and 7,017,162 for Application Program Interface for Network Software Platform have 51 coinventors. 

Strangest Patent Number

The U.S. has issued several “fractional” patents, including U.S. Patent No. 126 ½ on February 11, 1837, and U.S. Patent No. 3,262,124 ½ on July 19, 1966.

Most Popular

U.S. Patent No. 4,723,129 has been cited in 2,372 subsequent patents.

Most Prior Art

U.S. Patent No. 9.535,563 cites 7800 references; U.S. Patent No. 8,612,159 on Analyte Monitoring Device and Methods of Use cites 3,594 items of prior art on 32 pages.

Largest Patent Family

U.S. Patent No. 5,095,054 has 380 family members.

Longest Inventor Name

U.S. Patent No. 7,531,342 names Osterhaus Albertus Dominicus Marcellinus Erasmus as inventor with 44 characters in his name.

Most Enigmatic Title

U.S. Application 20020174863 is entitled “Unknown”

Simplest Drawing

U.S. Patent No. 448,647 issued March 24, 1891, on a Tooth Pick.

In WesternGeco L.L.C., v. Ion Geophysical Corporation, [2013-1527, 2014-1121, 2014-1526, 2014-1528](January 11, 2019), the Federal Circuit, on remand from the Supreme Court, remanded to the district court.

The Supreme Court held that WesternGeco’s damages award for lost profits was a permissible domestic application of 35 U.S.C. § 284,” reversing the Federal Circuit.

But the Supreme Court did not decide other challenges to the lost profits award. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision and the intervening invalidation of four of the five

asserted patent claims that could support the lost profits award, the Federal Circuit remanded the case to the district court.

In Ancora Technologies, Inc., v. HTC America, Inc., [2018-1404](November 16, 2018), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of Ancora’s complaint for infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 6,411,941 is entitled Method of Restricting Software Operation Within a License Limitation, finding that the claims are directed to, and ultimately claim no more than, an abstract idea.

The Federal Circuit said that under Enfish and related authorities, we conclude,the claims at issue here are not directed to ineligible subject matter. Rather, it held that the claimed advance is a concrete assignment of specified functions among a computer’s components to improve computer security, and this claimed improvement in computer functionality is eligible for patenting. As a result, the claims are not invalid under §101.

A two-step analysis determines whether claim 1 of the ’941 patent falls outside § 101: (1) whether the claim, as a whole, is “directed to”patent-ineligible matter—here, an abstract idea—and (2) if so, whether the elements of the claim, considered individually or as an ordered combination“‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.”  The Federal Circuit concluded that claim 1 is not directed to an abstract idea, and therefore it did not reach the second step.  In cases involving software innovations,this inquiry often turns on whether the claims focus on the specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities or, instead, on a process that qualifies as an “abstract idea” for which computers are invoked merely as a tool.

Computers are improved not only through changes in hardware; software can make non-abstract improvements to computer technology.  The Federal Circuit has several times held claims to pass muster under Alice step one when sufficiently focused on such improvements:  In Enfish, the claimed self-referential tables improved the way that computers operated and handled data.  In Visual Memory LLC v. NVIDIA Corp., the claims were directed to an improved computer memory system.  In Finjan,the claims were to a “behavior-based virus scan” that was a specific improvement in computer functionality. In Core Wireless Licensing S.A.R.L. v. LG Electronics, Inc.,the claims were directed to a method for making websites easier to navigate on a small-screen devices, using a specific type of index for a specific type of user.  In Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, the claims were directed to a specific method for navigating through three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets.In accordance with these precedents, the Federal Circuit concluded that claim 1 of the ’941 patent was not directed to an abstract idea. The Federal Circuit said that improving security against a computer’s unauthorized use of a program—can be a non-abstract computer-functionality improvement if done by a specific technique that departs from earlier approaches to solve a specific computer problem.  The Federal Circuit explained that the claimed method here specifically identifies how that functionality improvement is effectuated in an assertedly unexpected way: a structure containing a license record is stored in a particular, modifiable, non-volatile, portion of the computer’s BIOS, and the structure in that memory location is used for verification by interacting with the distinct computer memory that contains the program to be verified. In this way, the claim addresses a technological problem with computers: vulnerability of license-authorization software to hacking.  In short, claim 1 of the ’941 patent is directed to a solution to a computer-functionality problem: an improvement in computer functionality that has the specificity required to transform a claim from one claiming only a result to one claiming a way of achieving it, and it therefore passes muster under Alice step one, as it is not directed to patent ineligible subject matter.

On December 9, 1902 U.S. Patent No. 7157339 issued to A. B. Herd on a Jack-O’-Lantern.