CREATE Act Joint Research and Practice Strategies
"The Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act of 2004 (108 S 2192, Pub. L. 108-453)[.pdf] was incorporated into US patent law under the signature of President Bush on December 10, 2004. The Act extends the safe harbor provision of 35 U.S.C. 103(c) that shields patent claims from certain types of secret prior art. Under the new law, the safe harbor provision can be invoked to eliminate prior art if the claimed invention and the prior art at issue arose under a joint research agreement."
According to J. Matthew Buchanan, the Act is deceptively simple and can have very far-reaching effects. This post from his blog, Promote the Progress, presents a brief strategy for putting the new law into practice.
