George R. Cogar v. William E. Schuyler, Jr., Commissioner of Patents, and Sperry Rand Corporation

CHRISTENSEN, District Judge:

In this appeal we are asked to determine whether an inventor can prevent the issuance of a patent to himself; more specifically whether a protesting inventor, fearing injury to reputation from publication of a patent thought to be anticipated by the prior art, is entitled to an oral hearing in the Patent Office to contest patentability on an application filed by a proprietary claimant as agent for the inventor under 35 U.S.C. § 118 (1970). 1 Concluding that this novel problem falls somewhere between a case of “giant conceit”, as the trial court described it, and…