On October 19, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision for Valtrus in an inter partes review (IPR). In a precedential opinion, the court held that automatic Word metadata independently corroborated the inventor’s conception testimony.
Part 1 of 2
Google petitioned for inter partes review of claims 1–23 of Patent 6,728,704 (IPR2022-01545). The Board held that Google hadn’t shown any claim unpatentable, and the Federal Circuit affirmed.
Generated automatically, not authored by the inventor: it corroborated conception.
The patent owner showed earlier conception and diligence, and the Board’s decision stood.
The word-processor software generated the metadata automatically. The inventor didn’t author it. The court held that this metadata independently corroborated the inventor’s conception testimony.
The patent owner showed corroborated conception and diligence up to the filing date. It thus antedated Bushee, which Google had asserted as prior art under § 102(e) as it read before the America Invents Act.
Part 2 of 2
The antedating issue arises for patents under the law before the America Invents Act.
The holding is about metadata that the software made automatically, not text that the inventor wrote. The court assumed, without deciding, that the metadata was authentic.
In our review of Federal Circuit opinions through October 29, 2026, it is the only precedential opinion this month in an appeal from the USPTO.
The takeaway
Keep the original files. Automatic metadata can corroborate an inventor’s conception testimony.
Precedential decisions bind the Board within their designated scope. Informative decisions show the Office’s reasoning but do not bind the Board. Court opinions are cited for what they decided; later history was checked on the date shown above.