Just days before the shootings that took the lives of three faculty members at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Patent Office rejected the patent application of Amy Bishop, the suspect in the shootings.
In 2006, Ms. Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, applied for a patent on a "portable, self-contained incubation apparatus" for growing cell cultures. After more than three years of inactivity, the Patent Office finally began to examine the application late last year, and on February 4, eight days before the shootings, the Patent Office indicated that it was rejecting the application.
It is not clear if Ms. Bishop learned of the rejection before the shooting. The Patent Office did not mail the formal rejection papers until today, but the fact that the application was being rejected had already been posted on the Patent Office's Web site.
Today's Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite being denied tenure, Ms. Bishop "appeared to be enjoying and having some early success as an inventor" because a company, Prodigy Biosystems, had been formed to commercialize her incubator invention. But if Ms. Bishop learned that her patent application had been rejected, then her commercial venture may no longer have appeared to be a satisfactory alternative to a tenured professorship.
It is common for the Patent Office to reject applications when they are first examined. Such rejections can sometimes be overcome after a course of negotiations or appeals with the Patent Office. But even if these transactions are successful, they can delay the issuance of a patent for months or even years. According to the Chronicle, officials at Prodigy Biosystems feared that delays at the Patent Office were already jeopardizing the venture's chance of success.
