## Facts

- Leo M. Hall filed a reissue application on January 29, 1982, claiming an effective filing date of February 27, 1979.
- During prosecution, a protest submitted Peter Foldi’s doctoral dissertation from Freiburg University as prior art.
- Foldi submitted the dissertation in September 1977 and received his doctorate on November 2, 1977.
- The Freiburg University Library’s loan-department director provided declarations describing routine practices and stating that copies were received in November 1977 and, by December 1977, were freely available to faculty, students, and the general public.
- The examiner finally rejected claims 1–25 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b), finding the dissertation was a “printed publication” more than one year before the critical date.
- The Board sustained the rejection, and Hall appealed.
- Hall conceded the claims were barred if the dissertation qualified as a § 102(b) printed publication before February 27, 1978, but disputed whether the dissertation was sufficiently accessible before that date.

## Issues

1. Whether Foldi’s dissertation qualified as a “printed publication” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) by being publicly accessible more than one year before Hall’s effective filing date.
2. Whether evidence of routine library practice and declarations about availability can establish public accessibility without proof of the exact cataloging or shelving date.
3. Whether availability in a single university library, including a foreign library, can satisfy the public accessibility standard.

## Decision

- The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s rejection of claims 1–25.
- The court held the dissertation was a “printed publication” under § 102(b) because it was publicly accessible by at least December 1977, well before the critical date.
- The court rejected Hall’s arguments that the PTO needed exact cataloging-date proof and that a single library’s holdings were insufficient as a matter of law.

## Legal Principles

- A reference is a “printed publication” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) if it was publicly accessible such that interested persons of ordinary skill, exercising reasonable diligence, could locate it.
- Public accessibility, not the number of copies or locations, is the controlling inquiry; a single library copy can qualify if it is meaningfully available to the public.
- Competent evidence of routine library procedures, together with credible declarations about receipt and availability, can establish an approximate accessibility date; exact proof of cataloging or shelving is not always required.
- If a printed publication describing the claimed invention is publicly accessible more than one year before the applicant’s effective filing date, § 102(b) bars patentability.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a § 102(b) bar based on a doctoral dissertation made available through ordinary university library practices, holding that public accessibility can be shown through routine-procedure evidence and that a single publicly accessible library copy may constitute a printed publication.


In re Hall, 781 F.2d 897 (Fed. Cir. 1986)