Patently Unreasonable: Hyatt's Return to the Supreme Court and the Fight Over Prosecution Laches

"In 1968, Hyatt quit his engineering job at Teledyne and retreated to the family room of his Northridge, California home to design a computer that could fit on a single silicon chip. He filed his first patent application in December 1970, and the Patent Office eventually granted him US Patent No. 4,942,516 for "Single Chip Integrated Circuit Computer Architecture." That was in 1990, twenty years after filing."

"Hyatt holds 75 issued patents. And, he is also no stranger to the Supreme Court. In Kappos v. Hyatt, 566 U.S. 431 (2012), a unanimous Court sided with him on the scope of de novo review in § 145 civil actions against the PTO. And the Justices heard Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt three separate times, in 2003, 2016, and 2019, in a sprawling tax dispute."

"Now, at 87, Hyatt is petitioning the Supreme Court once again, this time asking the Justices to take up a question that has been brewing for more than two decades: whether the judicially created doctrine of "prosecution laches" can override the Patent Act's statutory timing provisions to deny a patent to an applicant who met every deadline Congress set."

Gilbert Hyatt, an independent inventor with 75 issued patents, has engaged in decades-long litigation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After filing his first patent application in 1970, he received US Patent No. 4,942,516 in 1990 and collected millions in licensing fees from major corporations. Hyatt has previously appeared before the Supreme Court twice, winning on de novo review scope and triggering a landmark sovereign immunity ruling. Now at 87, Hyatt petitions the Supreme Court again regarding prosecution laches—a judicially created doctrine that can deny patents to applicants who met all statutory deadlines. This case presents a focused legal question with potentially significant consequences for patent law.

Read at Patently-O