Appeal No. 1999-1002
Application No. 08/672,493
was such that “any testing had to be to some extent public”
(factor A) and ‘conducted “for a substantial period of time
(factor B) (Appeal Brief, pages 8 through 9). The appellants
were testing to determine the utility of the fuser rolls as a
replacement for the commercially available rolls. In order to
be a suitable replacement, the experimental flow-coated rolls
had to at least match the 2.2 million copies the conventional
rolls could produce. Specifically, the appellants were
testing to determine the occurrence of delamination of the
outer coating of the flow coated fuser rolls and whether the
flow-coated rolls could produce 2.2 million copies. The
field-testing procedure required a substantial period of time
in order for the experimental rolls to produce the 2.2 million
copies.
In addition, the experimentation was an iterative
process, meaning the lessons learned from one trial were
incorporated in the next. The appellants tested the
experimental roll in 8 different configurations at 35 test
sites, for a time period that spanned from February of 1994 to
November 10, 1995, in a substantial effort to improve and
perfect the invention. All these activities support
appellants’ contention that the public use was experimental.
12
Page: Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007