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Federal Circuit Split Decision on 'Public Accessibility' of Internet Posting

By Warren D. Woessner and Tania Shapiro-Barr

Do Internet postings constitute 'printed publications' that are available as prior art under 35 U.S.C. '102(b)? Most practitioners and examiners behave as though this were a settled question. It is not. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently addressed this issue in SRI International v. Internet Security Systems and Symantec, 2008 WL 68679 (Fed. Cir. 2008). After much discussion of the principle of 'public accessibility,' the majority of the panel determined that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether a paper that SRI posted on its Internet server was a printed publication.

The Case

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