With the advent of the first-to-file patent system that began on March 16, 2013, one of the things that patent practitioners will soon leave behind is the patent interference: a proceeding to determine which of two or more patent filers actually was the first to conceive of the invention at issue. Part administrative and part judicial, patent interferences have their own arcane procedures that developed over the 150+ years that interferences have been conducted.
The patent interference procedure pops up in some unlikely places. It is a key plot point in Aaron Sorkin's play, The Farnsworth Invention, which deals with who invented television. And in 1962, Richard H. Stern, Justice White's first law clerk, pointed out in a law review article the logical paradoxes that arise when applying patent interference law.
You can get a sense of the process by looking at the graphic to the left, which illustrates what happens when two patent applicants A and B provoke an interference with patentee C. The procedure involves scads of motion practice, testimony and multiple levels of review, all revolving around the abstract notion of determining "who thought of that first?" I always enjoyed my dealings with interference issues and I will miss this part of patent law.
The patent interference procedure pops up in some unlikely places. It is a key plot point in Aaron Sorkin's play, The Farnsworth Invention, which deals with who invented television. And in 1962, Richard H. Stern, Justice White's first law clerk, pointed out in a law review article the logical paradoxes that arise when applying patent interference law.
You can get a sense of the process by looking at the graphic to the left, which illustrates what happens when two patent applicants A and B provoke an interference with patentee C. The procedure involves scads of motion practice, testimony and multiple levels of review, all revolving around the abstract notion of determining "who thought of that first?" I always enjoyed my dealings with interference issues and I will miss this part of patent law.
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