2026-10-09 FindLaw (US Federal Circuit opinion, BlackLight Power Inc. v. Rogan, 2002)
Found via Google: "In re Mills" hydrino OR "BlackLight Power" Federal Circuit patent withdrawn 6,024,935. Justia copy (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/295/1269/597337/) was blocked by a Cloudflare check in Chrome and returned nothing to curl. The FindLaw copy loaded in Chrome: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-federal-circuit/1362587.html (decided 28 June 2002; 295 F.3d 1269).
Record type: court record (priority 4). Interested parties: BlackLight (appellant) and the PTO (appellee); the facts below are the court's summary.
Facts as the court states them [web: FindLaw URL above]: - BlackLight owned US application 09/009,294, "Hydride Compounds". The examiner first rejected the claims for operability (35 U.S.C. 101) and enablement and definiteness (112); "After further prosecution including discussions of experimental results and the submission of samples, the examiner withdrew the rejection and allowed the claims." Notice of Allowance 18 October 1999; issue fee paid; issue date noticed for 29 February 2000. - US 6,024,935, "Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structures", issued 15 February 2000. - "prompted by an outside inquiry", Group Director Kepplinger read the patent; her declaration: her "main concern was the proposition that the applicant was claiming the electron going to a lower orbital in a fashion that I knew was contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry." - She asked Robert Spar (Director, Special Program Law Office) to withdraw the '294 application; Notice of withdrawal from issue under 37 C.F.R. 1.313 dated 17 February 2000. The court notes it was "undisputed that no one involved in the withdrawal had reviewed the '294 patent application before issuance of the Notice"; the file was in Pennsylvania for printing. - Holding: the withdrawal was within the Director's authority "in light of the unusual circumstances of this case"; district court affirmed.
Bearing: the historical record of how claim 2 was treated by a government agency. The examiner had allowed the claims after seeing experimental results and samples; the reversal came from an outside inquiry and a supervisor's view of physics, before anyone re-read the application. The identity of the "outside inquiry" is not in the opinion; Wikipedia (2026-10-09-wikipedia.md) cites Bob Park's account. Not reached: the district court opinion, the later fate of '294 and of the four related applications, M. Rimmer, "Patenting free energy: the BlackLight litigation and the hydrogen economy", J. Intellectual Property Law and Practice 6(6) (2011) 374, doi 10.1093/jiplp/jpr010 (Crossref confirms; full text not read).