Comments on: Q) Titanium Baseball (MPEP 2100, Public Use or Printed Publication)

By: lily

lily — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:46:04 +0000

Seems like people have only been getting Variant 2 (july 4th, cataloged/indexed). Has anyone gotten variant 1 (public use)? what is the answer to that one?

By: Ricky

Ricky — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:21:17 +0000

MPEP2128–” available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.” will make a 102(a).

Therefore my concusion is

1. For a publication in library, audience must be those with interest to make a publication 102(a). The question posted by Alex clearly states that “The members of the club were wealthy individuals who were baseball fans, but had no interest in the design, development, manufacture, use, or sale of baseballs.” Therefore the paper is not 102(a). IF without this statement, it will became 102(a) on Jan 2004, when being catalogued under subject.

2. . For public display/uese, any audience, no matter with interest or not, will make it 102(b), of course the timemust be more than one eyar ago. As in variant 1.

any comments?

By: KF

KF — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:22:22 +0000

Anyone had this more recently?

By: BigBadVoodoDaddy

BigBadVoodoDaddy — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:20:09 +0000

Would an advertisement count as public use (display) if that was a choice?

By: Freds

Freds — Sun, 22 May 2011 09:40:45 +0000

I think the key to public access test to determine publication date for 102(a)/(b) purpose is accessibility to any member of the public. If the library is just open to wealthy patrons, that’s probably not public accessible within the meaning of the public access under 102(a)/(b) identity rule. That said, I think this is really a poor fact pattern. How long is the article? Could it be remembered by anybody who read it ?

As to the public use variant, the 2133 II A.2 has a large qualification “if the invention is otherwise used in its natural and intended way and the larger machine or article is accessible to the public”. Is the baseball, sitting on a museum display, used in its natural and intended way? Again poor fact patten.

By: Inessa

Inessa — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:01:42 +0000

I had this on today’s exam and chose July 4th as priority date because that’s when it was indexed.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:04:45 +0000

I had this today and selected July 4.

By: YesUCan

YesUCan — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:21:58 +0000

Got variant 2, picked 7/4 and passed on 2/17

By: Patti

Patti — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:58:06 +0000

I was wondering for variant 1 (public use) of the question, did we all agree it was the following date:

June 25: put in library open only to wealthy museum patrons, none of whom have skill in the art

By: Patti

Patti — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:45:11 +0000

I agree with Ve and Brandon if you get the printed publication variant of the question. The date is for sure July 4 because I checked it in the PTO.