Paper 55
Filed by: Trial Section Merits Panel
Mail Stop Interference
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria VA 22313-1450
Tel: 571-272-9797
Fax: 571-273-0042
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
_______________
BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
_______________
ESPER BOEL, TOVE CHRISTENSEN
and HELLE F. WOLDIKE
Junior Party
(Application No. 08/435,557),
v.
RANDY M. BERKA, DANIEL CULLEN,
GREGORY L. GRAY, KIRK J. HAYENGA
and VIRGIL B. LAWLIS
Senior Party
(Patent Nos. 5,364,770 and 5,578,463).
_______________
Patent Interference No. 105,205
_______________
JUDGMENT - RULE 127
Before: W. SMITH, LANE and POTEATE, Administrative Patent Judges.1
POTEATE, Administrative Patent Judge.
In an interference, “priority of invention is awarded to the first party to reduce the
invention to practice unless the other party can show it was the first to conceive of the invention
and that it exercised reasonable diligence in later reducing the invention to practice.” Hitzeman
v. Rutter, 243 F.3d 1345, 1353, 58 USPQ2d 1161, 1166 (Fed. Cir. 2001). Boel’s earliest
accorded priority benefit date is March 17, 1986, the filing date of its Danish Patent Application
1As part of Board efforts under the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, signatures on papers
originating from the Board are being phased out in favor of a completely electronic record. Consequently,
subsequent papers in this case originating at the Board will not have signatures. The signature requirements for the
parties have not changed. See, e.g., 37 C.F.R. § 10.18.
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Last modified: November 3, 2007