Griffith v. Kanamaru
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
816 F.2d 624 (Fed. Cir. 1987)
Owen Griffith (plaintiff) conceived an aminocarnitine compound invention by mid-1981 but didn't reduce it to practice until January 1984, during which time he set the project aside to work on other matters while waiting for external research funding and for a specific graduate student he'd promised the project to enroll at the university; Tsuneo Kanamaru (defendant) filed a patent application for the same invention in late 1982, before Griffith's reduction to practice. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interference ruled for Kanamaru, and Griffith appealed.
Whether a university researcher's delay in reducing an invention to practice, caused by waiting for a specific graduate student to enroll and for external research funding, satisfies the reasonable diligence standard needed to establish priority over a later-conceiving but earlier-filing inventor.