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706.02(f) >Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. 102(e) [R-1] - 700 Examination of Applications
706.02(f) >Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. 102(e) [R-1]
35 U.S.C. 102(e), in part, allows for certain prior art (i.e., U.S. patents, U.S. patent application publications and WIPO publications of international applications) to be applied against the claims as of its effective U.S. filing date. This provision of 35 U.S.C. 102 is mostly utilized when the publication or issue date is too recent for the reference to be applied under 35 U.S.C. 102(a) or (b). In order to apply a reference under 35 U.S.C. 102(e), the inventive entity of the application must be different than that of the reference. Note that, where there are joint inventors, only one inventor need be different for the inventive entities to be different and a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 102(e) is applicable even if there are some inventors in common between the application and the reference.<
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