Interference No. 103,322
necessity of providing adequate corroboration of that
diligence. See Gould, 363 F.2d at 919, 150 USPQ at 643.
Finally, something more than mere conversation or keeping an
idea under consideration is required to constitute diligence.
Id. at 918 n.9, 150 USPQ at 643 n.9. The presence or absence
of reasonable diligence must necessarily be determined by the
evidence adduced in each case. Id. at 921, 150 USPQ at 645.
Reviewing the senior party’s record, we note that
the senior party has not shown reasonably continuous diligence
from just before the junior party’s entry into the field,
i.e., October 3, 1989. The senior party’s evidence has an
unexcused hiatus or gap from the time Musil recorded his
contributions in his notebook, June 24, 1989, until after the
junior party’s entry into the field when Welling prepared some
drawings on October 10, 1989. We also note a relatively long
unexcused gap in the evidentiary record of the senior party
from October 10, 1989 to January 30, 1990. We need not
inquire further into the senior party record, since we find
these two gaps, alone, are
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