CAFC discusses "printed publication" in Suffolk v. AOL: the matter of "sufficient dissemination"

Within Suffolk v. AOL , the CAFC goes through the printed publication cases In re Klopfenstein, MIT v. AB Fortia, and SRI v. Internet, to conclude a message posted to a newsgroup was a printed publication. A grant of invalidity on summary judgment by EDVa was thus affirmed.


the ultimate reason Suffolk’s argument fails,
a printed publication need not be easily searchable
after publication if it was sufficiently disseminated at the
time of its publication. See, e.g. ,
In re Klopfenstein, 380F.3d at 1350–51.
Thus, the question becomes whether the
Post was sufficiently disseminated.