The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed the “first to invent” doctrine by upholding a ruling that a provisional patent application defeated the later filing of a full patent application by the appealing party.
The U.S. patent system is based on the “first to invent” doctrine, which awards patents to the first party to “reduce to practice” an invention. That means actually or constructively creating an embodiment of the invention. Most other countries use the “first to file” system, which awards patents to the party who files the application first.
