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On
September 16, 2011, President Obama signed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act into law. Part of the Act changed the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. As such, interference proceedings for any patent application with an effective filing date on or after
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At least two parties are involved in an interference proceeding: the inventor(s) or applicant(s) who filed an earlier patent application are called the "senior party", and the other inventor(s) or applicant(s) are called the "junior party". Both parties can be referred as "contestants", but that
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295:(1) Order of invention. Parties are presumed to have invented interfering subject matter in the order of the dates of their accorded benefit for each count. If two parties are accorded the benefit of the same earliest date of constructive
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The AIA switched the US to a first-to-file regime effective March 16, 2013, and interferences apply only to patent applications with an effective filing date prior to that change.
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are replacing interference proceedings in the patent statutes, but the dispute surrounding a derivation proceeding is unrelated to that of an interference proceeding.
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evidence that he or she is the first inventor. A senior party can also file a "motion to dissolve interference" to request the dismissal of challenges to its priority.
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in the USPTO, hears an interference contest. Its final judgment adjudicating one party as an earlier inventor is called a priority award, or simply an award.
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that he is the first inventor. The proceeding's administrator considers certain factors, such as the invention's conception date and the inventor's
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at least one pending patent application and at least one patent issued within a year of the pending application's filing date.
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Senior party: Merely being the first to file the application does not grant a party legal protection. It counts only as
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Agostino, Joseph; Briggs, Heath J.; Schindler, Barry J. (February 2, 2013).
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term is currently more likely to be used to describe the junior party.
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http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/aia-effective-dates.pdf
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Junior party: A party other than the senior party bears the
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MPEP 2300.01 Introduction - 2300 Interference
Proceedings
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United States
District Court for the District of Columbia
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proceeding to determine the priority issues of multiple
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March 16, 2013, were eliminated from U.S. patent law.
304:(2) Evidentiary standard. Priority may be proved by a
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United States Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit
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