Appeal No. 1996-1556
Application No. 08/154,135
(a) When any claim of an application or a patent
under reexamination is rejected on reference to
a domestic patent which substantially shows or
describes but does not claim the same patentable
invention, as defined in § 1.601(n), as the
rejected invention, or on reference to a foreign
patent or to a printed publication, and the
inventor of the subject matter of the rejected
claim, the owner of the patent under
reexamination, or the person qualified under §§
1.42, 1.43 or 1.47, shall make oath or
declaration as to facts showing a completion of
the invention in this country before the filing
date of the application on which the domestic
patent issued, or before the date of the foreign
patent, or before the date of the printed
publication, then the patent or publication
cited shall not bar the grant of a patent to the
inventor or the confirmation of the
patentability of the claims of the patent,
unless the date of such patent or printed
publication is more than one year prior to the
date on which the inventor's or patent owner's
application was filed in this country.
(Emphasis suplied).
This rule is consistent with the holding in In re Foster, 343
F.2d 980, 989-90, 145 USPQ 166, 174-75 (CCPA 1965), reh'g
denied, 384 U.S. 934 (1966), which indicates that a one-year
time-bar under 102(b), otherwise known as “statutory bar”, is
applicable to “obviousness” situations under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Having concluded that Madou cannot be removed as “prior
art”, we look to its content to determine whether there is a
sufficient suggestion to arrive at the claimed invention
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007