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706.02(e) Rejections Under 35 U.S.C. 102(d) [R-2] - 700 Examination of Applications
706.02(e) Rejections Under 35 U.S.C. 102(d) [R-2]
35 U.S.C. 102(d) establishes four conditions which, if all are present, establish a statutory bar against the granting of a patent in this country:
(A) The foreign application must be filed more than 12 months before the effective filing date of the United States application. See MPEP § 706.02 regarding determination of the effective filing date of the application.
(B) The foreign and United States applications must be filed by the same applicant, his or her legal representatives or assigns.
(C) The foreign application must have actually issued as a patent or inventor's certificate (e.g., granted by sealing of the papers in Great Britain) before the filing in the United States. It need not be published but the patent rights granted must be enforceable.
(D) The same invention must be involved.
If such a foreign patent or inventor's certificate is discovered by the examiner, the rejection is made under 35 U.S.C. 102(d) on the ground of statutory bar.
See MPEP § 2135.01 for case law which further clarifies each of the four requirements of 35 U.S.C. 102(d).
SEARCHING FOR 35 U.S.C. 102(d) PRIOR ART
The examiner should only undertake a search for an issued foreign patent for use as 35 U.S.C. 102(d) prior art if there is a reasonable possibility that a foreign patent covering the same subject matter as the U.S. application has been granted to the same inventive entity before the U.S. effective filing date, i.e., the time period between foreign and U.S. filings is greater than the usual time it takes for a patent to issue in the foreign country. Normally, the probability of the inventor's foreign patent issuing before the U.S. filing date is so slight as to make such a search unproductive. However, it should be kept in mind that the average pendency varies greatly between foreign countries. In Belgium, for instance, a patent may be granted in just a month after its filing, while in Japan the patent may not issue for **>several years<.
The search for a granted patent can be accomplished on an electronic database either by the examiner or by the staff of the Scientific and Technical Information Center. See MPEP § 901.06(a), paragraph IV.B., for more information on online searching. The document must be a patent or inventor's certificate and not merely a published or laid open application.
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