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I need some input regarding Prior Art. I have found some abandoned patents with almost similar invention to a US Patent with number WO2005065109A3.

It is possible to invalidate the patent by using previous patent from European country since the invention is no longer new anymore, and they were already exist that kind technology in German, French and Netherlands.

Please give some advices.

The Patent number that can be prior art documents are : - DE 19708178 (German) - EP 1477326 A1 (Netherland) - EP 1657676 A2 (French)

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First, WO2005065109A2 is not a U.S. patent number. The two letter designation WO denotes a PCT application. They are administered by WIPO. This PCT application does have a U.S. counterpart application that did result in the granted U.S. 7,212,688. That can be seen by looking up the PCT number in google patents (a new feature as of a few weeks ago).

Published patent applications, in-force patents, expired patents, journal articles, published thesis, etc. can be prior art. The language and country of publication doesn't matter.

In specific EP1477326 published in Nov. 2004 and US7212688 was filed earlier, in Dec. of 2003. That eleimates the '326 document as prior art. It wasn't prior. The '676 document was published even later in July of 2006.

The German document, was published earlier. It was published in 1998 and does qualify as prior art. I have not looked it how on-target it is, but it is useable from a date perspective and the other two are not.

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  • Hi George. Thank you for your explanation. Yes the granted patent is U.S. 7,212,688. And the best candidate for the prior art will be from German Patent DE 19708178. I did not understand about the on-target. Perhaps this on-target will be best to be left for the IP Lawyer of my clients. Thanks again for explanation.
    – Fherry
    Sep 15, 2013 at 12:11
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    I only looked at the dates, not the actual content. All but the German one are not available as prior art based on the dates. How close their content is has no relevancy since they are not "prior" in the first place. The next step would be to look at the claims of the US patent in comparison to the teachings of the German patent document
    – George White ♦
    Sep 15, 2013 at 17:19
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Abstract of the German Patent

The reproduction method uses a scanner for scanning the original to provide image data in which each image pixel is identified by a corresponding brightness value. The spacing between the image pixels can be increased or reduced for altering the image size, before recording a corresponding raster pattern on the sheet metal surface using a machining tool. The pixel points of the reproduced image may be recorded as a series of round holes, using a cutting or stamping tool, with a size which is directly related to the corresponding brightness value.

Source: https://depatisnet.dpma.de/DepatisNet/depatisnet?action=bibdat&docid=DE000019708178A1

According to this abstract the patent might be prior art

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  • Hi Peter, Thank you for the comment. I also strongly believe that this German patent is "the Father" of all patent and technology used to translate/image into a series of perforated pattern which can be easily made by using CNC machine. Thus, this can be the prior art for this kind of technology.
    – Fherry
    Sep 22, 2013 at 14:55

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