"Inherent Conception" Not Sufficient to Defeat Novelty

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a judgment of invalidity under § 102(g) based on the district court's misapprehension of the law governing conception, but it affirmed partial summary judgments that claims-in-suit were enabled and satisfied the written description requirement. The Court also affirmed the district court's partial summary judgment of literal infringement. Invitrogen Corp. v. Clontech Labs., Inc., Case Nos. 04-1039, -1040 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 18, 2005) (Gajarsa, J.).

Invitrogen owns three patents that disclose a genetically modified enzyme, reverse transcriptase, involved in DNA replication. Reverse transcriptase (RT) is a naturally occurring enzyme produced by retroviruses, and Invitrogen’s genetic modifications affect how the modified RT participates in DNA replication. Invitrogen reduced the invention to practice on January 27, 1987. Independently, two researchers at Columbia University had isolated mutant RT in 1984 but did not confirm that the