Appeal No. 1996-0910
Application 08/118,368
date. The appellants’ counsel is on record as explaining that
Boeing (the assignee of the present application)
contracted with a supplier (Ingersoll Milling
Machine Co.) to build and deliver to Boeing the
first two HAL Cell systems according to Boeing
specification #L-2433 which had earlier been sent
out for competitive bidding by the machine tool
builders. . . . [T]he inventors are employees of
Boeing” [Paper No. 14, pages 1 and 2].
The appellants, relying on the Walter and Kline
declarations, take the position on appeal that
Boeing could have built in-house the first machine
system intended for production use, but instead
elected to have an outside contractor (Ingersoll
Milling Machine Co.) build this complex machine for
Boeing. If Boeing had elected to build the first
production machine in-house, the on-sale issue would
not have occurred. But because Boeing elected to
have an outside contractor build the first machine
system, there was a sale (a non-public sale) of the
machine system. Applicants contend that the private
sale was an experimental sale because the machine
system was in an experimental mode until it had met
all the required Boeing qualification tests and
became a qualified machine [main brief, Paper No.
18, page 2].
Both the examiner and the appellants have characterized
the transaction between Boeing and Ingersoll as a “sale” of
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