Reduction to Practice example 2

Interference proceedings have been replaced by Derivation proceedings due to the America Invents Act (AIA).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. In this post, you will learn more about reduction to practice and what it means during interference proceedings. Consider the following key definitions that I will use to explain further the concept of reduction to practice.

Key definitions on conception, actual and constructive reduction to practice, and diligence

In addition, diligence is also presented. Diligence is the effort that the inventor puts into in order to develop further his or her idea prior to a competing inventor's moment of conception until the competing inventor's reduction to practice (actual or constructive). "D" is when diligence "takes place". This could be tricky. However, the method for determination of when diligence actually takes place is not that important right now. Consider the following diagram:

Analysis: In this case, inventor A conceived the idea first. Inventor A also showed reasonable diligence from a point at "D", which is a point in time just prior to when inventor "B" conceived the idea, all the way to inventor A's constructive reduction to practice. In this case, 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". So even if inventor B reduced it to practice before inventor A, inventor A still is "wins"? Yes, because inventor A conceived first and showed "reasonable" diligence all the way to the time of filing of the patent (constructive RTP). In other words, inventor did not "slack off" and at least tried to develop further the idea.

(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!).