Patent Code

As we saw in the previous section, properly determining inventorship is important because inventorship determines initial ownership and all of the attendant financial considerations that go with it. Listing proper inventorship is also critically important because improper inventorship means that the inventors listed are not the actual inventors of the subject matter. If you are thinking to yourself, so what then you need to recall that 102(f) of the U.S. patent code provides that A person shall be entitled to a patent unless. ..he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented (emphasis added). In 102(f), the word he refers to the inventive entity (all of the inventors) named on the patent.10 Thus if an inventor has been left off the patent (referred to as nonjoinder of a proper inventor), then the listed inventors did not invent the subject matter of the claimed invention entirely themselves since they did not invent all of the subject matter of the claimed invention.11 Such a patent is invalid. Likewise, if a patent is granted that lists one or more persons who were not actually inventors, then he would not have invented all of the subject matter sought to be patented since some of the listed inventors would not actually be inventors (this is referred to as misjoinder ). Such a patent is also invalid. If this seems a harsh remedy for what can be a difficult determination to make (as we soon will see), then you will be relieved to know that mistakes in inventorship can be corrected both before and after issuance of the patent. 

The subject of disclaimers underwent considerable revision in the new Patent Code of 1952. The effect of this was to reduce greatly its effect on the patent as a whole.. More than a century ago, if one or more claims of a patent was held invalid, the entire patent was likewise invalid. To relieve the harshness of this rule, the original disclaimer statute provided, in 1837, that the patentee could still sue on the other claims, provided a so-called disclaimer were filed and, provided further, that the patentee had not unreasonably neglected or delayed to enter the disclaimer. This language was fruitful of much controversy and has now been done away with. The only penalty now for not filing a disclaimer is that the patentee can no longer recover costs of the suit. The disclaimer in the patent under discussion was filed in 1949, before the new patent statute became effective Jan. 1, 1953. 

Derwent expended a great deal of time and effort in the definition of these Superatoms. As a part of this study, Derwent s Product Development team reviewed the work done by the Sheffield University team in the identification of generic terms found in patents, working closely with Derwent s Patents Coding Department. The aim of Derwent in defining Superatoms was the identification of small number of unambiguous terms that could be used to represent the concepts expressed universally in patents. At the conclusion of our study, the following Superatoms were defined ... 

Patent Codes AU—Australia BE—Belgium CA—Canada CH—Switzerland CN—China DE—German Federal Republic EP—European Patent ES—Spain FR—France GB—Great Britain IT—Italy JP— Japan NL—Netherlands NO— Norway PL—Poland SU—USSR US—United States of America WO—World Intellectual Property Organisation ZA—South Africa. 

In contrast to canonical linear notations and connection tables (see Sections 2.3 and 2.4), fragment codes arc ambiguous. Several different structures could all possess an identical fragment code, because the code docs not describe how the fragments arc interconnected. Moreover, it is not always evident to the user whether all possible fi aginents of the stmetures ai e at all accessible. Thus, the fragments more or less characterise a class of molecules this is also important in generic structures that arise in chemical patents (sec Section 2.7.1)... 

Today, fragment coding is still quite important in patent databases (sec Chapter 5, Section 5.11, e.g., Dei went) where Markush structures are also stored. There, the fragments can be applied to substructure or othei types of searches where the fragments arc defined, c.g., on the basis of chemical properties. 

Markush structures rcprcHL-uts compound families - widespread in patents nianual in/ontput convertible into otlicr representations high number of compounds less compact code ambiguous difficult to extract individual compounds... 

Design code Design for Recycling Design of experiments Design of proteins Design patents Designs Desipramine Desipramine [50-47-5]... 

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 37, Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1985—1995. 

Fig. 2. Representative front page of a U.S. patent. The bracketed numbers are INID Codes. For example, [54] designates the tide of an invention.

Because each country has its own patent laws, the precise meaning of the bibhographic data and the legal significance of the pubUshed patent document vary from country to country. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) provides a recommended code to distinguish the various types of documents and to simplify storage and retrieval of patent data (2), but the code is implemented differentiy by different countries. For example, in the United States an A-document in 1995 was a patent in the Nethedands, an A-document was a pubUshed unexamined appHcation. It is essential to understand each country s system to interpret the status of its patent documents. 

EDOC Questel Institut National de la ProprifitH Industrielle (INPI) international minimal bibliographic data patent families European Patent Classification codes... 

APIPAT DIALOG, STN American Petroleum Institute international, petroleum, petrochemical limited bibhographic data comprehensive English language abstracts of basic patents concepts and chemical stmcture coding for subscribers... 

Country codes in brackets are obsolete ICIREPAT codes. Country codes in parentheses were used by Derwent PubHcations Ltd. prior to the adoption of International Standards Organization (ISO) country codes. The obsolete codes remain on printed records, but have been replaced by current codes in on-line DATABASES. Eor Japanese patents, Derwent replaced the second character of the country code with the first digit of the pubHcation year prior to 1992 this variant of the company code is stiU found in on-line databases and printed pubHcations. 

Patent classification codes are another subject-search parameter available in most patent databases. IPC codes are usually present and U.S. codes exist in a number of files in the case of Japan Patent Information Organization (JAPIO), Japanese codes too are available. It is possible to mimic a hand search by limiting operations to references falling within one class or group of classes. Although such strategies can in some instances be justified, it is usually wiser to treat class codes as just one of the various subject parameters that make up a search strategy. 

With the advent of on-line searching in the 1970s, the Derwent file was one of the first to go on-line. It had subject retrieval capabiUty by the manual and punch code systems, tide terms, IPC, and broad subject groupings called Derwent classes, whose primary function had been to allocate patents to appropriate segments of the Derwent system. By 1981, abstracts were added to the database, after which abstracts for the entire back-file were added. 

Standard Code for Identification of Different Kinds of Patent Documents, "Patent Cooperation Treaty," Annex C. 

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