Appeal No. 2006-0132
Application No. 09/946,627
In Northern Telecom Inc., four reports prepared as part of a
military project were distributed to approximately fifty persons
or organizations involved in the same project. These reports
either explicitly or implicitly contain a secrecy obligation,
i.e., a restrictive notice that precludes reproduction or
dissemination. Northern Telecom Inc., 908 F.2d at 936, 15 USPQ2d
at 1325. These reports were also housed in a corporate library
accessible only to those authorized by the corporation. Id. Our
reviewing court held that these reports are not “prior art”
within the meaning of section 102 since no one “could have had
access to the document by the exercise of reasonable diligence.”
Id. By contrast, in the present case, an oral presentation on
the Wanthal document was given to forty to fifty people at a
“Closed Session” accessible to seemingly any and every U.S. and
Canadian defense industries and employees (they should all have
security credentials). Moreover, as indicated supra, twenty
copies of it were said to be sold without any obligation of
confidentiality and more copies were available to the interested
public upon its compliance with certain government regulations.
Indeed, there is no evidence in the record that the government
regulations referred to in Wanthal and relied upon by the
26
Page: Previous 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007