Thursday, June 3, 2021 When you apply for a patent in the United States, you have a legal duty to disclose prior art that could be used to reject your application — in essence, information that may be used against you by the examiner of your application. While persons accused of a crime have a right to remain silent, so as to avoid self-incrimination, inventors applying for a patent have no such right. To the contrary, an inventor’s failure to comply with the duty of disclosure risks any resulting patent being unenforceable. The Duty of Disclosure Each inventor, attorney, agent, person involved in preparing, filing, or prosecuting a patent application as well as any person associated with the inventor, the applicant, an assignee, or one to whom there is an obligation to assign, has a duty of candor and good faith in all proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Patent Office). This duty arises from a federal regulation, 37 CFR §1.56, which is commonly known as “Rule 56.”