Appeals Court Rebuffs Inventor Seeking Instantly Expired Patent

The Federal Circuit tossed a Pennsylvania inventor’s appeal of administrative rulings denying him a patent that, if issued, would instantly expire.

Donald Forest began seeking patents for touch-screen technology that could be used by individuals with cerebral palsy in 1995, and filed an application for a continuation patent in December 2016. Its expiration date, were it to issue, would’ve been in 2015, 20 years after Forest filed a related patent application.

“Effectively, Mr. Forest asks the Patent Office to grant him an expired patent,” wrote Judge Raymond T. Chen in an opinion issued Thursday by the US Court of Appeals ...