Materiality and a Legitimate Paranoia

Merck Patent GmbH is the assignee of U.S. Patent No. 7,576,193, which issued August 18, 2009.  The most notable aspect of this 29 page patent is the large number of publications cited on the face of the patent, or more accurately, on the first 9 pages of the patent.  While I realize the volume of publications reported on the ‘193 patent is not a record by any means, seeing such a listing in print is a grim reminder of the potential repercussions for nondisclosure of a publication that might be deemed material five or ten years down the road.  It’s a shame that holdings in cases such as McKesson Information Solutions, Inc. v. Bridge Medical, Inc., (Fed. Cir. 2007) compel an applicant and his attorney to submit any paper of which they are aware is associated with an application or application family, regardless of how remote the association to avoid a potential finding of patent invalidity and/or a potential charge of inequitable misconduct.

Tagged as: citations, IDS, inequitable misconduct