Appeal No. 96-3204
Application 08/129,636
set forth in appellants' brief and reply brief, we find that
appellants did not abandon their invention within the meaning of
35 U.S.C. § 102(c). While it is true that their first filed
application, Ser. No. 07/752,130, went abandoned for failure to
file a response to the final rejection therein, this does not
constitute or in any way alone evidence an intent to abandon the
invention on which that application was based. On the contrary,
appellants (1) during the pendency of the first filed
application, filed a PCT application (PCT/US92/06578) on the same
invention disclosed in the '130 application, (2) upon realizing
the error in allowing the first filed application to go
abandoned, filed the present application on the invention, even
though they had apparently lost their earlier filing date,
and (3) also filed a petition to revive the first filed appli-
cation --- all of which in our opinion weighs heavily against any
inference that appellants had abandoned their invention and
thereby sacrificed their right to obtain a patent on that subject
matter. In our view, the record before us clearly establishes
that applicants (Christie et al.) never lost interest in their
invention. Like appellants, we are of the view that the
examiner's reliance on the USM case (cited on page 3 of the
answer) is misplaced, since unlike in that case, there is no
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007