Brief Fact Summary. Milburn (Plaintiff) charged Davis (Defendant) with patent infringement and Defendant defended the charge by claiming that the application for patent filed by Plaintiff’s assignor followed Clifford’s patent application that disclosed the invention but did not result in a patent until after Plaintiff’s assignor applied.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. For the purposes of anticipating a later invention, a United States patent disclosing an invention dates from the date of filing of the application.
Obviously one is not the first inventor if, as was the case here, somebody else has made a complete and adequate description of the thing claimed before the earliest moment to which the alleged inventor can carry his invention back.
View Full Point of LawIssue. For the purposes of anticipating a later invention, does a United States patent disclosing an invention date from the date of the filing of the patent application?
Held. (Holmes, J.) Yes. For the purposes of anticipating a later invention, the effective date of a United States patent is considered to be the date when the patent application was filed. If an invention is disclosed by a patent where the application and patent grant both took place before a patent application followed covering the same invention, the second patent would clearly be barred. The delays of the Patent Office should not cause a different result when the first patent is not actually granted until after the second patent application is filed. The second patent should be barred in both cases because the second one to apply was not the first inventor. The first applicant has done everything he could to make the description public. The Patent Office now needs to do its work. Under the rule already mentioned, the Clifford application served as a bar to a patent being issued to Whitford on the same invention. Reversed.
Discussion. The Milburn rule has been criticized for using information as prior knowledge which was secret at the time it was used, that is, patent applications with secret content. Even so, it has been codified in § 102(e) of the 1952 Patent Act