"Public Use" Means Use For Invention’s Intended Purpose

Article by Paul Devinsky and Thomas George

Addressing whether a "public use" resulted when an ergonomic keyboard not connected to any device (e.g., a computer) was publicly displayed more than one year prior to the application filing date, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a summary judgment that the patents in suit were invalid under § 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because the keyboard was not used in public to enter data into a computer. Motionless Keyboard Co. v. Microsoft Corp., Case No. 2005-1497 (Fed. Cir., May 29, 2007)(Rader, J.).

Motionless Keyboard Company (MKC) is the owner of the U. S. patents directed respectively to an ergonomic keyboard designed to accommodate the architecture of the human hand, where only slight finger gestures are needed to actuate the keys and to a hand-held device that frees the thumb to actuate the keys within a keyboard disposed entirely within a cavity. The inventor developed a prototype keyboard that allegedly embodied both