## Facts

- Marshall W. Cronyn filed a patent application covering a chemical compound with potential cancer-treatment usefulness.
- A patent examiner rejected the application under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b), finding three Reed College undergraduate chemistry theses anticipated the claimed invention as “printed publications.”
- Reed College required all undergraduates to prepare a senior thesis as an educational graduation requirement; the work was not required to be original or publishable.
- Each thesis was placed in the main college library and the relevant departmental library.
- The libraries maintained thesis listing cards showing only the student-author name and thesis title, filed alphabetically by author.
- The theses were not indexed or cataloged by subject matter, keywords, or other topical means that would allow a researcher to search by the relevant technical field.
- Cronyn acknowledged the theses and cards were available for public examination, but argued they were not meaningfully findable without knowing the student author’s name.
- The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed the examiner’s rejection; Cronyn appealed to the Federal Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the three undergraduate theses, shelved in libraries and listed only by an alphabetical author card file, qualified as “printed publications” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b).
2. Whether physical availability in a library, without subject-matter indexing, makes a reference sufficiently publicly accessible to constitute § 102(b) prior art.

## Decision

- The Federal Circuit reversed the Board.
- The court held the theses were not “printed publications” under § 102(b) because they were not sufficiently publicly accessible to persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the art using reasonable diligence.
- The rejection based on anticipation by those theses could not stand.

## Legal Principles

- A reference is a § 102(b) “printed publication” only if it was disseminated or otherwise made available such that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.
- Public accessibility is the controlling inquiry; mere physical placement in a library does not, by itself, establish that a work is a printed publication.
- Meaningful indexing or cataloging is central where access depends on whether skilled researchers can find the work through customary research methods; an author-name-only listing may be insufficient when it does not permit subject-based searching.

## Conclusion

The court held that undergraduate theses placed in college libraries were not § 102(b) printed publications when they were only retrievable through an author-name card file and lacked subject-matter indexing that would allow skilled researchers, exercising reasonable diligence, to locate them.


In re Cronyn, 890 F.2d 1158 (Fed. Cir. 1989)