Patent office asks judge to throw out Las Vegas inventor’s case

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Las Vegas inventor who has been waiting on his applications for more than three decades.

The motion states that Gilbert Hyatt should have known his applications were abandoned more than 20 years ago, and he filed the lawsuit in the wrong jurisdiction.

The office’s lawyers argued in a motion filed this week that Hyatt’s “claims are not ripe” because he did not exhaust remedies to seek final action on the patents.

Hyatt designed a computer program to operate machine tools on production lines, and filed patents on the invention in 1971 and 1972 through his long-since-defunct Micro Computers Inc.

In January, Hyatt filed suit in U.S. District Court, asking for a decision on his patents, blaming the patent office for “unreasonably” delaying its action.

The patent office abandoned Hyatt’s application in 1993, and the court filing said he never took action to reverse the abandonment and request further review.

“Hyatt has not exhausted the administrative remedies available to him,” not having sought final action from the Patent and Trademark Office for the concerns he raises, the filing states. “There is thus no action on the merits that can be taken in that case.”

But Hyatt said Friday the patent office “misrepresented” the suspension and delays in the applications at question in the lawsuit, although he had made agreements in other patent applications.

“You can’t abandon someone’s case out of hand just because you want to get rid of them,” Hyatt said.

In his original complaint, Hyatt said he never received a response from the patent office after he filed status requests in 1995 and 2004, along with a “petition for an action on the merits” in 2005, and another status request in 2007.

A longtime inventor with a history of battling the patent office, Hyatt holds more than 70 patents.

What Hyatt would do with a patent in computer-aided production lines remains in question, particularly considering the technology has been in use for years.

Hyatt, who recently turned 76, said he was unsure whether the technology is still current.

“What I want is justice,” he said. “I’m entitled to a hearing before the board of appeals. I’m going to get my entitlement. They cannot get rid of me by delaying or abandoning my patent applications.”

In the filing this week, patent office lawyers said, “It is apparent that he simply does not like the action he has received.”

The office also said the complaint should have been filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The case is before U.S. District Judge James Mahan.

Contact reporter David Ferrara at 702-387-5290 or dferrara@reviewjournal.com. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker.