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USPTO Director Cracks Down on Patent Owner for Withholding Data and Imposes Severe Sanctions

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

IPR “Booted” Where Images on Webpage Coupled with Evidence of Sales Deemed Insufficient to Establish Prior Art Status

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has denied institution of an inter partes review for a design patent in part because the petitioner failed to show that three asserted references qualified as prior art. Specifically, the...more

PTAB: Patent Drawings Without Precise Measurements May Be Relied Upon as Prior Art, but Only for What They Clearly Show

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

PTAB Permits Submission of Evidence Midstream to Bolster Public Accessibility of References Despite Objections

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has granted a petitioner’s motion to submit supplemental information, over patent owner’s objections, concerning the public availability of references that were relied upon to support grounds...more

IPR Grounds Doomed for Failure to Show Patent Reference Was Supported by Disclosures in Priority Application

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

Handshake Agreement to Assign Does Not Provide Basis for Common Ownership to Exclude Prior Art

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently found claims directed to a web-based point of sale system and method unpatentable as obvious after conducting a thorough examination of whether a reference with one common inventor...more

PTAB: Dynamic Drinkware Written Description Requirement Inapplicable to Post-AIA Patents

The Federal Circuit held in Dynamic Drinkware, LLC v. Nat’l Graphics, Inc., 800 F.3d 1375, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2015) that for a pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) prior-art reference to be entitled to a provisional application’s priority...more

PTAB: Merely Showing That a Reference Was Available on the Internet Does Not Establish ‘Public Accessibility’

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

District of Delaware Holds That IPR Estoppel Does Not Apply to Device Art

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

Collateral Estoppel Causes PTAB to Reverse Course and Institute IPR

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a request for rehearing and instituted inter partes review of a web browsing patent in order to reconcile an inconsistency with a final judgment of un-patentability in the IPR of a...more

Patentee’s Own Clinical Trial Renders Unpatentable Patent Claims Directed to Antibody Treatment

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

Director Vacates PTAB’s Denial of Institution That Contradicted Federal Circuit Precedent on Anticipation and Written Description...

A Petitioner filed a request for rehearing and a request for Precedential Opinion Panel review after the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or the “Board”) rejected its petition for post-grant review. The Director of the...more

Federal Circuit: Burden of Proof in IPR Estoppel Rests with Patentee, Not Accused Infringer

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

Despite Instituting IPR, PTAB Invites Patent Owner to Re-Raise Challenge to Expert’s Qualifications at Trial

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

PTAB Precedential Ruling: Expert Declaration Devoid of Supporting Evidence Dooms IPR Petition

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

PTAB Reverses Course and Finds Challenged Patent Claims Unpatentable in Light of Applicant Admitted Prior Art

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

PTAB: Statements About Device Not Disclosed in a Video Are Not Prior Art; Concurrence: Video Itself—If Publicly Available—Is Prior...

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

IPR Petition Denied Due to Expert’s Lack of Relevant Experience

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

District of Delaware: IPR Estoppel Does Not Apply to Prior-Art Products

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

System Prior Art Allowed at Trial Despite Arguments that Related Printed Publications Could Have Been Asserted in Parallel IPR...

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

Industry Praise of Consumer Hair Product Sufficient to Rebut Bald Obviousness Allegations

In a recent inter partes review proceeding, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board relied on compelling evidence of secondary considerations to hold all challenged claims not unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Specifically, the...more

PTAB: Applicant-Admitted Prior Art Out of Bounds in IPR, If Used as Basis for Challenge

In an inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board applied guidance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and declined to consider an obviousness ground that was based on admissions about prior art in the...more

In IPR, No Collateral Estoppel Based on § 101 Ruling in District Court

A panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted inter partes review of a patent, rejecting the patent owner’s assertion that the petitioner’s obviousness arguments were collaterally estopped by a district court’s...more

Patent Owner’s Unpatentability Concession in IPR Insufficient to Trigger Estoppel of System Prior Art in District Court

The Eastern District of Texas has rejected a plaintiff’s argument that if a patent owner concedes in an inter partes review (IPR) that a prior art reference discloses all elements of a patent claim, the reference necessarily...more

Timing is Everything: Accused Infringer’s IPR Victory Estops Its Own Prior Art Invalidity Defenses, but Does Not Estop Plaintiff...

Inter partes review (IPR) proceedings can give rise to statutory and collateral estoppel. But these two bases for estoppel attach at different times, which can lead to asymmetrical outcomes in related district court...more

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