The central theme in this interference decision involving U.S. Pat. No. 8,697,359 is the amount and type of evidence required to support the conception of an invention. Joe Friday wanted the witness to focus on the facts of the matter, a focus that the Fed. Cir. found that the Board lacked.
In The Regents of the University of California v. Broad Institute, Appeal no. 2022-1594 (Fed. Cir., May 12, 2025), the PTAB had awarded a priority date to Broad that made them the senior partly, even though the Regents had given a presentation and published a paper in Science magazine describing the invention that spurred Broad (“Zhang”) to…