“Mag­netic tape, which stores most of the world’s com­puter back­ups, can degrade within a decade. Accord­ing to the National Archives Web site by the mid-​​1970s, only two machines could read the data from the 1960 U.S. Cen­sus: One was in Japan, the other in the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion. Some of the data col­lected from NASA’s 1976 Viking land­ing on Mars is unread­able and lost forever.”

“Cor­rect­ing Inven­tor­ship: An issued patent is pre­sumed to name the cor­rect inven­tors. Thus, an inven­tor­ship chal­lenge must bring “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” that the newly sur­faced inven­tor “con­tributed to the con­cep­tion of the claimed inven­tion.” “Sim­ply reduc­ing to prac­tice that which has been con­ceived by oth­ers is insuf­fi­cient for co-​​inventorship.” Under the clear and con­vinc­ing stan­dard, the inven­tor­ship chal­lenge “must be cor­rob­o­rated by inde­pen­dent evidence.””