Reduction to practice
step in the formation of an invention beyond the conception thereof
In United States patent law, the reduction to practice is the step in the formation of an invention beyond the conception thereof. Reduction to practice may be either actual (the invention is actually carried out and is found to work for its intended purpose) or constructive (a patent application having a sufficient disclosure is filed). The date of reduction to practice was critical to the determination of priority between inventors in an interference proceeding under the discontinued first-to-invent system as well as for swearing behind a reference under that system.
Conception is the "formation in the mind of the inventor, of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention, as it is hereafter to be applied in practice." Hybritech Inc. v. Monoclonal Antibodies, Inc., 802 F.2d 1367, 1376 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (quoting 1 Robinson On Patents 532 (1890).
The reduction to practice of an invention can either be:
Actual reduction to practice: "[R]equires that the claimed invention work[s] for its intended purpose." Brunswick Corp. v.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Reduction to practice” as step in the formation of an invention beyond the conception thereof. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as step in the formation of an invention beyond the conception thereof. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7306374. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1367, 1376, 1986 and 1890.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reduction to practice” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.