New USPTO Equation, Length of Time + Expertise of Target Audience + Copying = Printed Publication?

Mondaq Business Briefing, October, 2004

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently held that a slide show that was printed and then displayed on a poster board for approximately three days at a meeting of chemists and at a university was a "printed publication" under s.102(b). The slide show was not "published" in the sense of copies being disseminated, nor was it catalogued or indexed in any library. In re Klopfenstein, Case No. 03-1583 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 18, 2004).

In this case two inventors from Kansas State University applied for a patent (the `950 application) that disclosed methods of preparing foods comprised of extruded soy cotyledon fiber. Approximately two years earlier the inventors presented a printed slide show at a meeting of the American Association of Cereal Chemists that...