Inventorship, test

Ibid., p. 3354. Inventorship test in chemical priority conflicts. 

By the turn of the century the U.S. PTO may be operating under a system that includes (/) pubHcation of patent appHcations (2) opposition of allowed appHcations for purposes of testing vaHdity (J) the dawn of first-to-file priority examination and (4) the end of the antiquated test of inventorship called "interference practice." Legislation implementing many of these changes is pending before the U.S. Congress. 

Fact situations which make a person a sole inventor and which make two or more persons joint inventors, in the eyes of the law, are discussed. The concept of joint inventorship is contrasted with situations where others are "extended technical arms of the inventor." Problems such as the synthesis of a new compound by a chemist and discovery of a utility by a person trained in another discipline are presented, including selection of an old compound by a chemist for testing or a particular utility and discovery of a related utility by another person. Observations are made on the likelihood of a patent being held invalid under different improper inventorship situations. 

K-Resin SBC was invented by Alonzo Kitchen, a research chemist at Phillips Petroleum Research and Development laboratories. With inventorship came the opportunity to name the new resin, which he called K-Resin . The first pilot plant resins were made in 1967, and commercial samples were prepared for test marketing in 1968. Commercial production started in October of 1972 at the SBC plant in Borger, Texas, on a 10 million pound per year capacity line. Initially, the solution product was steam stripped to remove the hydrocarbon solvent, but this left a significant haze in the resin. The finishing system was quickly converted to a devolatilizing extruder. Commercial production continued at this plant until 1979, ending with the opening of a new production facility at Adams Terminal (later renamed the Houston Chemical Complex) in Pasadena, Texas. The new plant had a nameplate capacity of 120 million pounds per year. Plant expansions increased the production capacity in 1988 and 1994 to a total nameplate capacity around 300 million pounds per year. 

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