Comment by nullc
3 days ago
That's a common but highly misleading view.
If you invent something and publish it (including by offering it to the public in product) your work constitutes prior art and is an absolute bar against the subsequent (valid) patenting of the invention by a third party. F2F vs F2I has no impact on this.
What F2F means if that if two people working in secret create the same invention and show up at the patent office at the same time-- the first one to file gets it. The earlier F2I scheme instead had a contest where the party that is the most ambitious in fabricating lab notebooks to backdate their invention gets the patent.
Because of a poor choice in naming many people wrongfully assume F2F means you can go pick up other people's inventions out of the public sphere and claim them as your own because you filed first.
The misunderstanding is exacerbated because fraudulently patenting other people's inventions is commonplace-- as there is no consequence for doing so except losing the patent after getting defeated on review/litigation-- but the practice isn't meaningfully influenced by F2F vs F2I.
> The earlier F2I scheme instead had a contest where the party that is the most ambitious in fabricating lab notebooks to backdate their invention gets the patent.
The implementation of F2I is then the issue. It should be the first to fulfill all of the following requirements:
(1) physically show at least 2 patent clerks the invention,
(2) that the invention works & operates as outlined, with the clerks being the ones to operate the machine, and
(3) a detailed step-by-step guide to the clerk about how the machine works
The date that the patent is awarded should be the date where the last of the 3 actions occurred.
That's first to file with a particular (and onerous) set of requirements for filing, not first to implement.
You can do that in a F2F system. That's one of the flaws of a F2F system.
Yes, it might get thrown out in appeal, but it might not. And that uncertainty is worth money to patent trolls.