Nothing Personal: Supreme Court Says Feds Lack Post-Grant Standing -

With post-grant trials passing their seventh anniversary, the courts are still working out the kinks. The U.S. Supreme Court has already provided clarification in four cases. In Cuozzo, the Court held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) could use a claim construction standard that the board subsequently stopped using. In two opinions issued on the same day in 2018, the Court paradoxically decided that the board must address all challenged claims (SAS), explaining that post-grant patent reviews are like private litigation in that the petition (like the complaint) governs the scope of the proceeding, and that the board (not just courts) can cancel a patent claim (Oil States) because post-grant patent reviews are more like an agency revisiting its own decision to grant the patent than private litigation between parties. The latest decision, Return Mail, Inc. v. U.S. Postal Serv., 587 U.S. —, 139 S. Ct. 1853 (2019), turned on whether the federal government is a person.