A Federal Circuit Reminder of the Continued Importance of Laboratory Notebooks and Other Corroborative Evidence of Inventorship
| April 22, 2016
Meng v. Chu
April 5, 2016
Before: Prost, Dyk and Wallach. Opinion by Prost
Summary
In 1987, a research group at the High Pressure Low Temperature (“HPLT”) lab at the University of Houston lead by Ching-Wu Chu, a professor and the lab’s lead investigator, developed inventions related to superconducting compounds having transition temperatures higher than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The University of Houston filed two applications listing Chu as the sole inventor. The inventions were assigned to the University of Houston and licensed to Dupont. The University of Houston and Ching-Wu evenly shared the license proceeds received from Dupont, and Chu gave $274,000 from his share to Pei-Herng Hor, a grad student at the lab, and Ruling Meng, an independent scientist at the lab. After issuance of patents for the inventions, in 2008 Hor filed a law suit in the District Court for the Southern District of Texas seeking to be added as a co-inventor and in 2010 Meng intervened seeking to also be added as a co-inventor. The District Court denied both Hor’s and Meng’s claims on the bases that they had failed to meet the “heavy burden” of proving co-inventorship by clear and convincing evidence despite Hor and Meng having received proceeds under the license, having been the first and second listed authors on a publication related to the inventions, and having been commended by Chu in a letter of recommendation for Hor for his discoveries related to the inventions. The Federal Circuit affirmed.
