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Failure to identify contribution from Chinese factory dooms US patent

By Melissa Ritti ( March 19, 2025, 19:47 GMT | Insight) -- Discovery of a previously unknown feature in a sample provided by a third party confers no retroactive conception of the feature for inventorship purposes. In reaching that conclusion earlier this week, a New Jersey judge said that because a factory in China supplied the “essential element” of Gerard Prendergast’s claimed temperature-regulating pet platform but was unnamed as a coinventor, Prendergast’s patent is invalid.A patent assigned to luxury pet product manufacturer Green Pet Shop Enterprises LLC was declared invalid on inventorship grounds earlier this week when a New Jersey federal judge said a patentee omitted the contributions of a Chinese factory in his application....

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