Research Notebook Guidelines
Invention Disclosure Form.pdf
The Why and How to Keep a Good Laboratory Research Notebook.
A good laboratory research notebook is a daily log of your work, your experimental procedures, the experimental results, and your interpretations. A good laboratory research notebook is a detailed research report. Other people can use your laboratory research notebook to determine what was done, why it was done, what the results were, and what future work is contemplated. A good laboratory research notebook is essential for writing patent applications and can be used as evidence that an invention was made on a specific date.
For example, in the United States, a patent is granted to the person who is first to invent. In a priority dispute with another party, a good laboratory research notebook will provide credible evidence as to who made the invention, the specific date that the invention was conceived, and how diligent the inventors were in reducing the invention to practice and filing a patent application.
However, for a laboratory research notebook to serve as credible evidence, entries into the laboratory research notebook must be made in a timely fashion and witnessed by a non-inventor who can understand the invention.
Invention dates should be documented because of the possibility of a future priority dispute. For example, if an inventor who made the invention first, but filed the patent application second, can prove with credible evidence that they made the invention first, the resulting patent will be awarded to that person and not to the person who filed the application first but made the invention second.
For the first inventor to prove a priority date, the first inventor must be able to submit credible evidence, hopefully from a good laboratory research notebook, to the Examiner or to a court. The priority date is either the date the invention was conceived and reduced to practice prior to patent application filing or the date at which the invention was conceived and subsequently worked on diligently until the patent application was filed.
During patent prosecution, evidence of the date of invention can be used to remove prior art documents cited by the Examiner when the prior art documents are published less than one year before the patent filing date. In this case, the inventor must document conception and diligence from a time prior to the publication date to the time the invention was either reduced to practice or filed as a patent application.
In an interference proceeding among two parties with identical claims, proof of the date of invention is important for determination of which party was the first party to invent the claimed invention. Credible evidence for this determination may include, for example, laboratory research notebooks, invention disclosures, internal memoranda, and internal research reports. Signed and witnessed copies of these forms can be used to establish conception and reduction to practice.
Independent testimony may not be view as credible; however, when the testimony is provided long after the facts occurred. Typically, original exhibits, drawings, records or photocopies must accompany and form part of the affidavit or declaration by the inventor or their absence must be satisfactorily explained. Legible laboratory research notebooks are preferred as a corroborating source because notebooks are an unbiased resource prepared contemporaneous with conception and reduction to practice. Thus, there is a presumption that these notebooks are an unbiased and true representation of the data. Therefore, laboratory research notebooks should be signed and witnessed at or near the time of their preparation by a non-inventor, who has read and understood their contents.
To antedate a prior art document cited by the Examiner during prosecution, an applicant is required to provide evidence of priority to the part of the claimed invention that the prior art document shows. Therefore, it is not necessary that the laboratory research notebook demonstrate each and every fact provided in a particular publication. Instead, the applicant must demonstrate that they were already in possession of the particular information at the time the prior art document was published.
Since a good laboratory research notebook is the preferred evidence, the laboratory research notebook should be a bound commercial volume that is numbered. The notebook includes a place for the researcher’s name and together with the starting and the ending dates. The notebook contains an index and consecutively numbered pages. Each page should contain a place for the researcher to sign and date each page. At the bottom of each page is a place for the signature of at least one witness along with printed words stating that the signature indicates that the witness has read and understood the contents of that page
The laboratory research notebook should contain a description of each experiment and any ideas relating to conception. The experiment should begin with a title. The methods used should be provided in detail but can reference previously disclosed methods listed on other pages or in other laboratory research notebooks.
A key should be included complete descriptions of all of the abbreviations. Experimental results should also be included. For example, photographs, data outputs such as graphs, etc. should be labeled, attached with double stick tape, dated, signed, and witnessed.
If you have any questions, please contact us.