Appeal No. 1996-1552
Application 08/241,976
McDonnell’s declaration, the respective viewpoints of appellant (Brief, pages 7 to 15) and the examiner
(Answer, pages 6 to 9), and all other evidence of record. In the instant case, we find the examiner’s
argument, that Mr. McDonnell’s declaration evidences "numerous gaps in diligence" during the critical
period (Answer, pages 7 to 9), to be unpersuasive. We agree with appellant (Brief, page 15) that the
acts of Mr. McDonnell attested to in his declaration demonstrate reasonable diligence throughout the
critical period, and we note our agreement with the appellant that the examiner failed until after the Brief
to specify which and whose actions (from amonst Mr. Root, Mr. Gray, and Mr. McDonnell)
constituted "numerous gaps in diligence" as referred to in the Advisory Actions of March 22, 1995, and
April 25, 1995.
We find that the McDonnell declaration shows that Mr. McDonnell worked reasonably hard on
the instant application in question during the continuous critical period of August 22, 1991, to July 30,
1992. Specifically, the McDonnell declaration (from pages 3 to 5 therein) shows that during the critical
period Mr. McDonnell worked reasonably diligently on the instant application to resolve inventorship
issues, review and evaluate the invention disclosure, supervise submission of the invention disclosure to
the Invention Evaluation Board for approval, held meetings with various Navy employees to resolve
overlaps in subject matter and inventorship, and supervised contracting out of the preparation of the
patent application. Although the examiner cites three specific periods of time during the critical period
as not having diligence (Answer, page 7), none of these time periods greatly exceeds one month. In
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