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Information from Galen Suppes in UMissouri matter

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

IPBiz received the following from Professor Suppes:

I believe that the main reason the University filed the lawsuit against me was that that was an effective way to terminate the grievance panel (filed 1/08) from making a recommendation within the next 30 days.

On the two patents cited on the IPBiz page, the fuel cell patent had no federal support (no research support at all) and only involved my concepts. I filed a disclosure and a patent and told the university that I have filed the patent. The tech transfer contact then said the patent was the University?s; I said it was mine but offered to give it to the University if they repaid the $400 in patent feed I had paid; they did not respond; this exchange was repeated three years later; then I received a letter from their attorney; then I assigned them my inventor rights to it and informed them that I expect them to hire a patent and follow through or release; then they let it lapse; then they filed a lawsuit against me and accused me of not assigning it to them and said I had threatened to cease responding the USPTO examiner actions to proceed to patent.

On the PCM patent, no federal support (or any support at all) had been received when the patent was filed after I arrived at my new position at MU. The 4-5 provisional applications cited in the application were filed prior to my joining MU and the conversion to a non-provisional was made within 30 days of my arrival here. I asked the university?s Patent Committee to have the university cease to make any claims on this patent. The Patent Committee recommended that the University hire an attorney to look at the USPTO wrapper and make a recommendation. The University never did this but did proceed to file a lawsuit against me for not assigning all rights of this patent to them.

See earlier IPBiz post:

Univ of Missouri sues ChemE prof over patent rights

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).