Prior Art Takes New Shapes: Relying on Non-traditional Prior Art to Invalidate a Patent

When we teach kids today about Internet privacy, one of the things that is emphasized is that once something has been posted on the Internet, that posting seemingly takes on a life of its own, with an eternal existence, even if the original poster deletes the posting. Unfortunately, companies have not learned this lesson and temporal items, such as press releases and Internet publications, can come back to haunt a patent owner in the form of invalidating prior art for a post-grant review. The following paragraphs consider ‘non-traditional’ prior art, for example, press releases, Internet publications, drug labels among others, and examine considerations in determining whether such non-traditional prior art can be used as a basis for invalidating a patent.

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