Intellectual Property Law

Paper posted on public FTP site not necessarily printed publication; summary judgment reversed

By McKee, Voorhees & Sease, P.L.C.

In a decision this week, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the district court's determination that the plaintiff's patents-in-suit were invalid as anticipated by another paper that was publicly available via the patentee's FTP site before the critical date for the span of one week, finding genuine issues of material fact as to whether the paper was "publicly accessible" as required by 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as of the critical date of the patents.  The court, however, affirmed the grant of summary judgment by finding one patent invalid as anticipated by the patentee's own previous paper, as that paper was sufficiently enabled to constitute prior art.

More detail of SRI Int'l, Inc. v. Internet Security Sys., Inc. after the jump.

[More]

Full post as published by FileWrapper on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).