Keeping Lab Notes
Laboratory notebooks are important records to establish whether a new invention is patentable or not. The recorded information can establish dates of conception and reduction to practice of a technology as well as the inventorship of a patent claiming the technology*. Remember the following important guidelines, as RECORD:
R
Record all laboratory information in a bound notebook, and use indelible ink. Each page of the notebook should be used. If blank spaces must be left, a line should be drawn diagonally through the blank space, and the line signed and dated. Everything must be permanently recorded. State your hypothesis, materials and methods, data and conclusions. All labels and other materials must be permanently glued into the laboratory notebook.
E
Each entry must be signed and dated by the person doing the work. Legal rules of evidence apply. (There are no other rules except "legal" ones.) Your reputation, career and inventions rest on your written documentation.
C
Corroborate all entries by an additional, knowledgeable party (e.g., the Principal Investigator) who reads, co-signs and dates all entries.
O
Original entries should never be erased. If a mistake is made, draw a single or double line through the mistake and sign and date the correction.
R
Review and retain all records. Records should be safely retained as long as necessary. For example, invention records should be retained for a minimum of 30 years. Review is important to analyze research progress, evaluate the laboratory technician's or graduate student's performance, discover trends in the data, and spark the imagination of invention.
D
Data generated or stored on a computer must be printed out, permanently bound, signed and dated, and corroborated.
