The lawsuit was filed on the final day allowed for legal challenges to the 27 August election.
The official election result, announced on 31 August, gave Mr Bongo a second seven-year term with 49.8% of the vote to Mr Ping's 48.2%.
Mr Ping criticised results in Mr Bongo's home province of Haut-Ogooue, where turnout was 99.93% and 95% of votes were for the president.
Turnout in the other provinces was between 45% and 71%, according to Gabon's interior ministry.
Is it worth challenging presidential election results? By Damian Zane, BBC News
A court has never overturned a presidential election result in Africa, according to Robert Gerenge, head of special programmes at the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa.
In the past year, losing candidates in Uganda and Zambia have failed in their legal efforts, although that it is not to say all elections are rigged.
In Zambia, a technicality stopped Hakainde Hichilema's attempt to get last month's presidential election result changed. He ran out of time to present his case.
Uganda's supreme court in March dismissed Amama Mbabazi's challenge saying that while there were issues, they did not affect the final result.
This ruling had a precedent across the continent.
Following Nigeria's 2007 election, the legal process took 20 months before the courts had a final answer.
The supreme court said despite irregularities, there was no proof that they altered the outcome.
In Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai initially went to court in 2013 to challenge the re-election of President Robert Mugabe. But he dropped the case, saying that the president had stopped him from getting a fair hearing.
In general there are three types of situations, Mr Gerenge says:
There is no faith in the legal process so opposition supporters take to the streets rather than the court
Losing candidates go to court under diplomatic pressure even though they have no faith in the outcome
Losing candidates have faith that the judges will be impartial
On Monday Gabonese Justice Minister Seraphim Moundounga resigned in protest.
The EU has also questioned the legitimacy of the election results.
But Mr Bongo retaliated, telling France's RTL radio "some of the EU observers overstepped their mission".
When the election results were announced people took to the street in protest.
The Gabonese authorities say three people have died and 105 have been injured following violent clashes and more than 800 arrests.
Mr Ping puts the death toll higher - saying dozens of his supporters have been killed and that a presidential guard helicopter bombed his headquarters.
Gabon election: Bongo v Ping
Mr Bongo took office in 2009 after an election marred by violence
He succeeding his father Omar Bongo who had come to power in 1967 and was Africa's longest serving leader
Veteran diplomat Mr Ping had served as chair of the African Union
He had been a close ally of Omar Bongo and had been his foreign minister
He had two children with Omar Bongo's daughter, Pascaline
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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