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[khazzah]

As noted above, the MPEP and BPAI likely consider even a mere attorney statement under 103(c) to be "evidence."  And, from the opposite side, I would argue that a certified priority document is not evidence in the sense of rule 116.  Unfortunately, these issues are not really clear...

Likely?  Surely not. A mere attorney statement is never considered to be evidence.   If the MPEP is going to prohibit you from relying on 103(c), it wouldn't be by redefining evidence. 

FWIW, the MPEP uses the word "evidence" when referring to the attorney statement to establish common ownership.

II.    EVIDENCE REQUIRED TO ESTABLISH COMMON OWNERSHIP

It is important to recognize just what constitutes sufficient evidence to establish common ownership at the time the invention was made. The common ownership must be shown to exist at the time the later invention was made. A statement of present common ownership is not sufficient. In re Onda, 229 USPQ 235 (Comm'r Pat. 1985).

The following statement is sufficient evidence to establish common ownership of, or an obligation for assignment to, the same person(s) or organizations(s):

Applications and references (whether patents, patent applications, patent application publications, etc.) will be considered by the examiner to be owned by, or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person, at the time the invention was made, if the applicant(s) or an attorney or agent of record makes a statement to the effect that the application and the reference were, at the time the invention was made, owned by, or subject to an obligation of assignment to, the same person. [\quote]

That said, I think both the MPEP and the CFR use "evidence" inconsistently. So perhaps the above MPEP section is just an unfortunately choice of words when drafting.

If the attorney submitted a copy of the assignment recordations in order to establish common ownership, would this be "evidence"? I have seen this in a few file wrappers. I've never done it ... I just take the shortcut of making the attorney statement in my response.

[Isaac]

That said, I think both the MPEP and the CFR use "evidence" inconsistently. So perhaps the above MPEP section is just an unfortunately choice of words when drafting.

If the attorney submitted a copy of the assignment recordations in order to establish common ownership, would this be "evidence"? I have seen this in a few file wrappers. I've never done it ... I just take the shortcut of making the attorney statement in my response.

Maybe.  But I can see a supervisor insisting that "evidence" means evidence.

I did give some thought to the assignment recordation issue when I posted my original response.  I'd be inclined to forgo providing those copies in this case.