LV inventor challenges U.S. patent procedure

Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2000 | 11:03 a.m.

A Las Vegas inventor is seeking an order to force the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to lift what he calls an unlawful restriction on his patent application.

Gilbert Hyatt filed a patent application on May 31, 1995, for his invention, the "Duty Cycle Modulated Illumination Control System," which he said reduces flicker and other visual distractions on liquid crystal-type displays on televisions and computers.

A U.S. District Court lawsuit Hyatt filed against the government agency and its officer Todd Dickinson alleges many inventors are paying excessive patent fees, legal expenses and being delayed on their patent applications because the agency allegedly deliberately misinterpreted a federal patent statute.

The suit alleged the statute is supposed to allow inventors to "claim in a single patent application multiple dependent inventions that may otherwise be considered distinct inventions."

The agency, however, allegedly interprets the statute to mean that multiple dependent inventions can't be included in the single patent application and separate applications have to be made for any additional related inventions, Hyatt's attorneys said.

A dependent invention is an invention that relates to the main invention.

Citing an example of a chair developed with a seat, a right arm rest and left arm rest, Hyatt's attorneys said that "while the portions of the chair may be distinct inventions, they are not independent ... of one another since they operate together as a chair and they depend on one another."

Hyatt's attorneys, who said the statute is supposed to allow inventors to obtain more comprehensive patent coverage within a single application, alleged the agency, by "improperly interpreting the statute as it does, can impose a restriction requirement where it determines that inventions claimed are independent or distinct inventions."

"This gives (the patent and trademark office) much more discretion to force an applicant to split his applications into two or more applications, which the patent office then charges a separate fee for the prosecution of each application," said Mark Hutchison, Hyatt's attorney.

A patent office official declined comment.