Timing is everything—so the ­saying goes. In the world of patent procurement, bad timing can have horrendous consequences. A district court recently held that a patent application was filed one day later than the statute allowed, and the resulting patent was thus invalid. The ­decision contravenes 150 years of accepted patent practice. If the decision is allowed to stand, more than 12,000 patents may become worthless.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware’s decision—Immersion v. HTC, No. 12-259, slip op. (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2015)—is now on appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. At issue is the interpretation of the statute pertaining to continuing applications, a type of patent application that is filed when multiple inventions need protection. Since a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) examiner is only required to examine one invention per patent application, multiple inventions require the filing of multiple patent applications, respectively. Thus, after an initial patent application that discloses multiple inventions is filed, subsequent applications—­continuing applications—may be filed that receive the benefit of the filing date of the initial ­patent application. Receiving that benefit is of vital importance to the patent owner. The filing date plays a myriad of functions:

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]