Appeal No. 1997-0616
Application No. 08/318,205
INVENTOR'S STATEMENT") filed August 8, 1994 (paper 11), which
discusses that the oil company "engaged" an equipment fabricator
to build a portion of the plant in which the claimed method
"might be practiced." (Final Office action, page 3.) Further,
the examiner finds: "Applicant then met with the equipment
fabrication [sic] to familiarize the equipment manufacturer with
the method and discuss changes in equipment design to
accommodate the method if it were accepted by the oil company."
(Id. at pages 3-4.) Based on these observations, the examiner
concludes as follows:
[I]t appears that the oil company, equipment
manufacturer and applicant were in possession of the
invention and were working to manufacture and build a
plant design for VOC emission control based on
applicant's ideas which are directly related to the
claimed invention constituting a statutory on-sale
bar. [Final Office action, p. 4.]
In the answer, the examiner's position is summarized as
follows:
It is maintained that the Examiner is not in error in
interpreting neither the Information RE-Pre-Critical
Date Activity nor the Supplemental Inventor's
Statement [sic] that these documents provide that an
"Offer to Sell" has been made by the Appellant Ralph
Hicks and the U.S. Oil Company and therefore the
invention has been reduced to practice and appellant
has not established an Experimental Use Scenario and
thus an exception to Public Use or Sale. [Examiner's
answer, p. 5.]
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007