Reduction to practice. How important is it?
Interference proceedings have been replaced by Derivation proceedings due to the America Invents Act (AIA). Do not take this blog post or any post on this website as legal advice. The following are key definitions that I will use to explain different scenarios revolving around the concept of diligence and reduction to practice.
These icons will also be used to explain additional scenarios that may not be used in this blog post.
These concepts are applicable in patents with no claims on or after September 16, 2013. This is the date of the enactment of the America Invents Act (AIA). As a side note: RTP by itself means reduction to practice that could either be actual or constructive. Consider the following example:
(Note: while this is an example I obtained directly from the USPTO, I actually custom created the diagrams and wrote in plain English for you! You're welcome!). For inventor B, we are not concerned with whether or not it was actual or constructive in order to make our analysis.
Here is an analysis of the above example. Inventor A happens to "come up with the idea" first. This is called conception. Because inventor A both conceived the invention before inventor B and constructively reduced the invention to practice before inventor B reduced the invention to practice, inventor A:
is awarded priority in an interference, or...
antedates B as a reference in the context of a declaration or affidavit filed under 37 CFR 1.131
This means inventor A wins in an interference proceeding!
What if both inventor A and B conceived the invention at the same time? see the following example:
In this case, inventor A is also "awarded priority in an interference", or... "antedates B as a reference in the context of a declaration or affidavit filed under 37 CFR 1.131". This makes common sense to us. Reduction to practice is a really important thing. So even if 2 inventors came up with the idea at the same time, one still might win over the other because he or she reduced it to practice first.