The Western District of Texas recently denied a defendant’s motion to stay pending inter partes review based in part on the defendant’s status as a non-party in the IPR proceedings. In doing so, the district court focused on...more
In a final written decision of an inter partes review proceeding, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found all 12 claims of a challenged patent unpatentable as either anticipated or obvious. Each ground of unpatentability...more
10/10/2023
/ Anticipation ,
Clinical Trials ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Ownership ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Prior Art
In an ANDA case in the District of Delaware, the court has rejected an obviousness challenge to a patented method of increasing survival in patients having prostate cancer. The court found that early clinical trial results...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has denied a patent owner’s motion to terminate an inter partes review proceeding finding that the unidirectional nature of estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e) renders common-law claim...more
In a decision denying summary judgment, the District of Massachusetts weighed in on an unsettled issue: whether after receiving a final written decision in an inter partes review, a patent challenger is permitted to raise...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) granted Petitioner’s motions to sanction Patent Owner for failure to meet its duty of candor and fair dealing in five related inter partes review proceedings. The PTAB found that...more
In an appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, the Federal Circuit confirmed that on the issue of inter partes review (IPR) estoppel, the burden of proof rests on the patentee to...more
The Federal Circuit has reversed the District of Delaware’s ruling that added an inventor to a patent. The Federal Circuit found that the contribution by the added inventor was not significant when measured against the...more
In a sua sponte review, USPTO Director Kathy Vidal continued her refinement of the PTAB’s “discretionary denial” practice. Specifically, the Director vacated the Board’s decision to deny institution in Volvo Penta of the...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently instituted an inter partes review where the patent owner argued that the petitioner failed to establish its expert as a person of skill in the art, which would have rendered the...more
Patent Office Director Katherine Vidal recently issued a precedential decision addressing an issue of first impression before the Board: whether the patentability of multiple dependent claims must be determined separately for...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently rejected an inter partes review petition that relied on a conclusory and unsupported expert declaration. The expert’s written testimony, which repeated portions of the petition...more
In the wake of her October 4, 2022 Precedential OpenSky decision, the United States Patent and Trademark Office Director Katherine Vidal issued another precedential decision further clarifying the actions that should be...more
The USPTO Director recently conducted sua sponte review of a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision granting adverse judgment in four IPR proceedings where a panel found that the patent owner had abandoned the contests. In a...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a request for rehearing of a final written decision in which it had originally determined that the challenged were not unpatentable. On rehearing, the board found that petitioner’s...more
In a precedential 52-page sua sponte decision, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Katherine Vidal addressed several issues of first impression relating to sanctionable misconduct in inter partes...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied a petition to institute inter partes review, finding there was no reasonable likelihood that petitioners would prevail on their obviousness challenges. In rendering its decision, the...more
In an IPR institution decision issued shortly after the USPTO issued interim guidance on discretionary denials, the PTAB held that the petition presented “compelling evidence of unpatentability,” foreclosing a Fintiv...more
A recent board decision denying inter partes review serves as a reminder that an expert opining on obviousness must at least meet the definition of an ordinarily skilled artisan. The patent at issue related to a...more
Petitioners moved for an order requiring Patent Owner to produce discovery comprising Final Infringement Contentions from related district court litigations between the parties. Petitioners set forth two independent bases...more
A judge in the District of Delaware has ruled that an estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) does not apply to prior-art products, even if those products are “cumulative” of prior-art patents or printed publications that were...more
The USPTO recently issued new guidance on how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) will apply Apple Inc. v. Fintiv Inc., a 2020 precedential decision which laid out considerations for denying institution of a post-grant...more
Key Points -
On June 21, 2022, USPTO Director Katherine K. Vidal issued a memorandum titled “Interim Procedure for Discretionary Denials in AIA Post-Grant Proceedings With Parallel District Court Litigation.”
Under...more
In a recent order, the Eastern District of Texas declined to preclude a defendant from raising prior art system references despite patentee’s argument that similar printed publications could have been raised in earlier inter...more
A district court recently denied a motion for attorney’s fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285 where the defendant successfully invalidated each claim of the patent at issue during an inter partes review proceeding. The district court...more