Q: If somebody steals your intellectual property rights for patents documents can you still pursue the litigation?

A: I am not sure that I have your precise question but let me take a guess.

FACT Pattern

I am guessing that you invented something and had some level of documentation of your development and proof of date of conception of that invention. That material is now largely gone.

RESULTS

You can still file for a patent. No one from the patent office will ask for documentation on the dates that you invented things. You will need to sign an oath under penalty of perjury if you lie that you believe you are the first person to invent what is in your patent application. Essentially, you are saying that you did not steal someone else's invention and try to file a patent on it.

Inventor notebooks were a bigger deal when the US was a first to invent system not a first to file system. Now it is fairly rare that you have to show a inventor notebook. You may have other documents that corroborate your story that you invented something in the spring of 2017 or whenever. You may have credit card receipts for your purchases of components or tools. You may have traveled to meet with a vendor or a potential customer.

Now if someone else files a patent application based upon the inventor notebook stuff that went missing, you can fight their patent application as this is the exception to first to file. If they filed a patent application based upon your work, then you can win over them by showing that what they filed is based on your work not theirs. This is tricky and you will need patent counsel to help you. Depending on how much of your documentation went missing and how well the other people lie, you may not get what you deserve. However, in patent litigation with the opportunity to get the other side's emails and documents and to depose various people in the company, most lies get exposed.

I hope this helps.

Kevin E Flynn