Inventor Was Not Diligent in Reducing Invention to Practice by Prioritizing Other Work Ahead of Patent Application

The court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment that plaintiffs' DNA sequencing patent was invalid as obvious based on a prior art patent application filed two months before the application for the patent-in-suit, and the court rejected the inventor's claim that he was diligent during that two-month delay. "[Defendant] argues persuasively that the implications of [the inventor's] busy professional life are quite different: by prioritizing other work over the. . . patent application, particularly his contract work for [a third party], [the inventor] did not act diligently, but instead voluntarily set aside his own work in favor of someone else’s, outside of the bounds of his normal professional obligations. . . . [The inventor's] own invention was at the bottom of his priority list, and. . . that cannot support a finding of diligence."

Illumina Inc., et. al. v. Complete Genomics Inc., 3-10-cv-05542 (CAND October 16, 2012, Order) (Laporte, M.J.).