Mitchell took on the patent office pro se which is acting as his own attorney. The best thing one can say about this tactic is that it saved him a million bucks (compared to P&F)
The Court decision was poor IMO – in that that it was based on this statement: The burden of proof therefore “shifted to Swartz to show sufficient evidence to convince an ordinarily skilled artisan of the inventions’ utility. The evidence and arguments Swartz presents do not satisfy this burden…” END What a load of crap - this statement is absurd even though the patent office has a specialized meaning for “utility”. OTOH – it would have been a stronger denial for them to assert that the original filing of U of Utah was the invention of LENR and the improvements of Swartz were not significant enough to show further utility or novelty over the original filing which had been abandoned. They did not do that. When Fleischmann died it had already been 22 years since he and Pons first published the US and World patent application Method and apparatus for power generation in 1990, with 110 pages of text and drawings. The University of Utah/ ENECO was the assignee but even they gave up after spending 500,000. It would have been twice that today… … if that’s any consolation. From: Terry Blanton http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-1122.Opinion.7-17-2018.pdf Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: Google Alerts brought me this: https://www.law360.com/articles/1064060/fed-circ-backs-uspto-nix-of-cold-fusion-patent-apps Fed. Circ. Backs USPTO Nix Of Cold Fusion Patent Apps Law360 (July 17, 2018, 7:46 PM EDT) -- The Federal Circuit on Tuesday affirmed a Virginia federal judge’s rejection of a suit against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by a man who claims to have invented cold fusion, a hypothetical type of room-temperature nuclear reaction that most scientists believe is impossible, finding that the lower court did not err in dismissing his challenge. In a seven-page nonprecedential decision, the panel upheld U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema’s decision in August to dismiss Dr. Mitchell R. Swartz’s suit against the USPTO for alleged misconduct... [That is all I can read without a subscription.]
