Immersion Corporation v. HTC Corporation, No. 15-1574 (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2016)

From the Opinion

The passage below is extracted verbatim from the opening of the document. It has not been editorially summarized — consult the full opinion for the court's complete reasoning.

This case involves one necessary condition, under 35 U.S.C. § 120, for treating a patent application, filed as a continuation of an earlier applicati on, as having the earlier application’s filing date , not its own filing date. That timing benefit shrinks the universe of “prior” art for determining validity. The condition at issue, as relevant here, is that the continuation application be “filed before the patenting” of the earlier application.