Federal Appeals Court Tackles Patent Prior Art and Public Disclosure
Highlights
Federal Circuit affirms a PTAB finding that an inventor’s non-confidential sale of an invention did not quality as public disclosure exception to prior art
The court did not agree that the Supreme Court’s decision in Helsinn v. Teva meant a private sale can be a public disclosure
Paradoxically, confidential sales can now be prior art, yet non-confidential sales may not be public disclosures
In Sanho Corp. v. Kaijet Technology Int’l Ltd., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit addressed the scope of the prior art exception in U.S. law that deals with conditions for patentability, which provides “[a] disclosure shall not be prior art to a claimed invention under subsection [102](a)(2) if . . . the subject matter disclosed had, before such subject matter was effectively filed under subsection (a)(2), been publicly disclosed by the inventor.” In this case, the court affirmed a decision by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) that the prior art in question, a private but non-confidential sale of the invention by the inventor, did not qualify for the exception.
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