The recent Federal Circuit decision McKesson Info. Solutions, Inc. v. Bridge Med., Inc., No. 2006-1517 (Fed. Cir. May 18, 2007) has many patent prosecutors scrambling to file information disclosures after the court found inequitable conduct based on the all-too-common oversight of not cross-citing prior art from similar, co-pending applications and the even more common oversight of not cross-citing allowances and rejections from such applications.
Inequitable conduct occurs when a patent applicant, with the intent to mislead or deceive the examiner, fails to disclose material information or submits materially false information to the Patent and Trademark Office during the prosecution of the patent application. A finding of inequitable conduct will render a patent unenforceable.
