Hazeltine Research, Inc. v. Brenner
United States Supreme Court
328 U.S. 252 (1965)
Robert Regis (plaintiff) filed a 1957 patent application for a microwave switch improvement. The Patent Office rejected it as obvious in light of two earlier patents: the Carlson patent, unquestionably prior art since it issued eight years before Regis's filing, and the Wallace patent, which was still pending (and not publicly available) when Regis filed, becoming public only 43 days after Regis's application date. Regis argued the still-secret Wallace application shouldn't count as prior art, since no one could have discovered its contents before he filed. After losing before the Patent Office Board of Appeals, the district court, and the court of appeals, Regis appealed to the Supreme Court.
Whether a patent application that is still pending and not yet publicly available at the time a later application is filed can nonetheless count as prior art in evaluating that later application's obviousness.