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Rh U. S. 92, 94 (1877) (“[A] single instance of sale or of use by the patentee may, under the circumstances, be fatal to the patent…”); cf. ''Smith & Griggs Mfg. Co. v. Sprague, 123 U. S. 249, 257 (1887) (“A single sale to another… would certainly have defeated his right to a patent…”); Elizabeth v. Pavement Co.'', 97 U. S. 126, 136 (1878) (“It is not a public knowledge of his invention that precludes the inventor from obtaining a patent for it, but a public use or sale of it”).

The Federal Circuit—which has “exclusive jurisdiction” over patent appeals, 28 U. S. C. §1295(a)—has made explicit what was implicit in our precedents. It has long held that “secret sales” can invalidate a patent. E. g., Special Devices, Inc. v. OEA, Inc., 270 F. 3d 1353, 1357 (2001) (invalidating patent claims based on “sales for the purpose of the commercial stockpiling of an invention” that “took place in secret”); Woodland Trust v. Flowertree Nursery, Inc., 148 F. 3d 1368, 1370 (1998) (“Thus an inventor’s own prior commercial use, albeit kept secret, may constitute a public use or sale under §102(b), barring him from obtaining a patent”).

In light of this settled pre-AIA precedent on the meaning of “on sale,” we presume that when Congress reenacted the same language in the AIA, it adopted the earlier judicial construction of that phrase. See Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1, 16 (1948) (“In adopting the language used in the earlier act, Congress ‘must be considered to have adopted also the construction given by this Court to such language, and made it a part of the enactment’ ”). The new §102 retained the exact language used in its predecessor statute (“on sale”) and, as relevant here, added only a new catchall clause (“or otherwise available to the public”). As amicus United States noted at oral argument, if “on sale” had a settled meaning before the AIA was adopted, then adding the phrase “or otherwise available to the public” to the statute “would be a fairly