The Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently declined to institute a petition for IPR that was filed on the same day that the petitioner filed another petition challenging the same claims of the same patent. The board was not...more
In an institution decision following the USPTO’s withdrawal of its Fintiv Memo, the board addressed discretionary denial of an IPR under Fintiv in view of a parallel ITC investigation. The board noted it would not consider...more
In a recent newsflash, we discussed the USPTO’s withdrawal of its 2022 memorandum that detailed how the PTAB would exercise its discretion to deny petitions for inter partes review and post-grant review. New guidance from the...more
On February 28, 2025, the USPTO announced that it was rescinding former Director Vidal’s 2022 memorandum on discretionary denials by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The 2022 memorandum effectively narrowed the application...more
The District of Arizona recently held that a plaintiff’s failure to mark patented products during the time period that marking was required barred it from recovering all pre-notice damages, including for a period of time when...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted institution of inter partes review of a patent directed to delivery of targeted television advertisements. The board rejected patent owner’s argument that a lack of particularity as...more
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) aims to provide expeditious decisions for its litigants. That means that there is a higher bar for obtaining extensions of time. As exemplified in BMW v. ITCiCo, the UPC’s reluctance to grant...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board determined that a reference could be used as prior art because patent owner failed to provide sufficient evidence that the prior art’s disclosure was invented by all four named inventors, and...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected a patent owner’s assertion that petitioner should have named a third party, which was a defendant in a related district court patent infringement litigation and a party to a joint...more
The PTAB denied a petitioner’s motion to compel routine discovery that sought information from a parallel ITC investigation for alleged inconsistent positions taken by patent owner in the IPR. The board found that patent...more
10/30/2024
/ Discovery ,
Evidence ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Motion to Compel ,
Parallel Proceedings ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Semiconductors
The Central District of California ruled that the heightened pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 9(b) applies to all three prongs of a false patent marking claim, including the third prong, competitive...more
The Director of the USPTO initiated sua sponte review of a PTAB panel’s decision to impose sanctions based on patentee’s conduct during IPR proceedings.The PTAB cancelled all of patentee’s claims, including those not...more
9/24/2024
/ America Invents Act ,
Duty of Candor ,
Ethics ,
Good Faith ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent Validity ,
Patentability Search ,
Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Sanctions ,
USPTO
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied institution of an inter partes review petition because a prior art patent figure did not provide exact dimensions, and therefore could not meet the relevant claim limitation. On...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted an inter partes review over patent owner’s objections that the petition did not timely identify all real parties-in-interest (RPI) and was filed by a phantom legal entity after...more
7/29/2024
/ California ,
Delaware ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Jurisdiction ,
Limited Liability Company (LLC) ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Ownership ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Reorganizations
A court in the Western District of Oklahoma dismissed a complaint as to one of the asserted patents where the patent included a terminal disclaimer stating that the patent would be enforceable only as long as it was co-owned...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has denied institution of an inter partes review, in part because the petitioner failed to show that a key reference qualified as prior art. The PTAB ruled that the petitioner was required to...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that outlines a new framework for collaboration between the two...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied institution of a petition for inter partes review under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) because the petition was filed more than one year after patent owner had served a complaint for patent...more
In keeping with precedent, a judge in the District of Delaware issued an oral order restricting the extent of permissible activities for litigation counsel before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The order resolved a...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has denied institution and joinder of an inter partes review petition after determining that the petition was not only time-barred but that joinder was also foreclosed. In making its...more
The USPTO Director vacated a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision denying institution of inter partes review for not addressing alleged differences between references in the petition and those considered during prosecution....more
The Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office vacated and remanded a decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board discretionarily denying institution of an inter partes review petition. The Director concluded that...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied institution of a petition for IPR after determining that the petitioner failed to show a reasonable likelihood that its primary asserted reference, which was available through the...more
Federal Circuit Judge William Bryson, sitting by designation in the District of Delaware, ruled on summary judgment that inter partes review (IPR) estoppel does not apply to device art, even if the device is cumulative of...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied institution of an inter partes review after determining that petitioner failed to establish public availability of a prior art reference based on an alleged publication date listed in...more