The United States is for all practical purposes a "first to file" system since the burden of proving otherwise can be expensive and time-consuming. However, there will arise situations where a client owns an intellectual property, but by being second to file is closed to the marketplace. In such a situation, a client can request an interference proceeding be instituted where they can establish that they were, in fact, the first to invent. The winner of such a proceeding ends up owning both patent(s) that were previously split between them. These patent priority contests, which generally also include patentability determinations, are waged before the United States Patent and Trademark Office's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. The Board's Trial Section, consisting of a group of specialized Administrative Patent Judges ("APJs") with technical backgrounds, adjudicates the disputes in much the same way a federal Dis trict Court would. Patent interferences provide a unique forum at the USPTO for conducting inter partes patent disputes without resorting to District Court litigation. For example, in interferences, patent claims are given their "broadest reasonable interpretation", the burden of proof for demonstrating unpatentability is by a "preponderance of the evidence", and the decision-makers (typically a panel of three APJs) are technically trained patent professionals. In addition, patent interferences are normally scheduled to conclude two years after commencement, are usually less discovery-intensive, and can therefore be less costly. Patent interferences are very much like District Court litigation in many ways, including discovery proceedings (incorporating witness cross-examinations or depositions), evidentiary issues, and specialized procedural rules.
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