F.

Requirements for Patentability

1. Novelty (Printed publications)

In re Hall, 781 F.2d 897, 228 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 453 (Fed. Cir. 1986)

Ruling of the court: An invention that is already in the public domain is no longer patentable.

The "printed publication" bar is found in 35 U.S.C.S. § 102(b), which provides that a person shall be
entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a
foreign country more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.
The bar is grounded on the principle that once an invention is in the public domain, it is no longer
patentable by anyone. Here, the dissertation had an effective date as prior art more than a year
before the filing date of Hall’s first application. Competent evidence of the general library practice
may be relied upon to establish an approximate time when a thesis becomes accessible. The
dissertation was indexed and placed in the main collection at Freiburg University in Germany.
Magazine articles become public as of the date of their publication (when they are available to the
public), not when they are sent to the publisher. In this case, the statutory bar involved 35 U.S.C. §
102(b) because the publication occurred more than one year prior to Hall’s application for the patent.