Gould v. Hellwarth
Court of Customs and Patent Appeals
472 F.2d 1383 (1973)
Gould (appellant) filed a laser patent application more than two years before Hellwarth (respondent) filed a competing application; in the resulting interference proceeding, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences found Gould's application failed to satisfy the enablement requirement, since substantial additional work beyond the disclosure was needed to create a working laser, and one disclosed embodiment still hadn't been successfully reduced to practice by the time of the court proceedings. Priority was awarded to Hellwarth, and Gould appealed.
Whether a patent application disclosure that is deficient, such that it requires additional work to reach a functioning version of the claimed product, meets the enablement requirement.