Are Your Granted Patents in Danger of a Post-Grant Double Patenting Challenge?
The Briefing: A Prototypical Corporate Salesperson is Not Patentable
Podcast: The Briefing - A Prototypical Corporate Salesperson is Not Patentable
Ways to Amend the Claims in the Patent Invalidation Proceedings
Patent Right Evaluation Report in China’s Patent System
Stages of Patent Invalidation Proceedings
After eight weeks of shifts in governmental policies, the patent bar is feeling repercussions from all directions. One critical area in flux is the post-grant challenge arena. With a reduced PTAB head count and a steady...more
Parties involved in Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings sometimes contemplate submitting experimental data to support their positions. Although such data can be useful, there also are risks. Several recent cases...more
On, January 27, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed-in-part and reversed-in-part a decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) on certain claims of Gesture Technology...more
Inter partes activity involving design patents at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) was relatively low in 2024. The PTAB rendered just two inter partes decisions involving design patents: Next Step Group, Inc. v....more
In Celanese Int’l Corp. v. ITC, the Federal Circuit addressed whether the America Invents Act (“AIA”) changed the on-sale bar such that the sale of a product made using a secret process would no longer invalidate later-sought...more
In In re Cellect, 81 F.4th 1216 (Fed. Cir. 2023), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a later-expiring patent can be invalid for obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) in view of an earlier-expiring,...more
The Federal Circuit recently affirmed summary judgment that patent claims directed to identifying advertisements based on search results are patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The court found that...more
In GeigTech East Bay v. Lutron Electronics, patent owner GeigTech argued that Lutron should be estopped under 35 U.S.C. § 325(e)(2) from asserting two prior art grounds that it said Lutron could have reasonably raised in its...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected a patent owner’s argument that the Board should exercise its discretion to deny a petitioner’s inter partes review (IPR) petition because Petitioner failed to name a time-barred real...more
On August 28, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in In re Cellect, Appeal No. 2022-1293, evaluated for the first time how statutorily authorized patent term adjustments interact with the judge-made...more
Two bills recently introduced in Congress could significantly affect the current patent litigation landscape. The bipartisan bills are titled the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023 and the Promoting and Respecting...more
On April 3, in Ironburg Inventions Ltd. v. Valve Corp., the Federal Circuit articulated a standard for applying inter partes review (IPR) estoppel on grounds a petitioner “reasonably could have raised” under 35 U.S.C. §...more
Addressing the public use bar of pre-America-Invents-Act (AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 102(b), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision to invalidate a patent because the patent owner’s...more
Inventorship issues can have serious implications in patent litigation, leading to invalidation or unenforceability of the patent at issue, as seen in several notable 2022 cases. In the coming year, patent owners should take...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, citing a dispute as to material facts, held that a factfinder could reasonably conclude that an alleged joint inventor failed to sufficiently contribute to inventing the...more
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Minerva Surgical Inc. v. Hologic, Inc. over the rather arcane issue of assignor estoppel. Stop - I can figuratively feel your eyes rolling after reading the phase...more
On July 31, 2020, in American Axle v. Neapco, the Federal Circuit split 6-6 on the question of whether to grant en banc review of a panel decision on patent eligibility seen by many as an unwarranted extension of the...more
Last month, Moderna Therapeutics, one of the global leaders in the race to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, made the following statement regarding enforcement of its patents: We feel a special obligation under the current...more
Last month’s newsletter discussed Alacritech, Inc. v. Intel Corp, where patent owner Alacritech appealed a final written decision (FWD) of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) for inter partes review (IPR)...more
Addressing whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in finding that a dependent claim was valid despite the patent owner’s lack of validity arguments beyond those...more
The COVID-19 pandemic and widespread shelter-in-place orders have hit every corner of the country’s economy, including tech companies of all sizes. Many tech companies have traditionally maintained large patent portfolios to...more
The availability of post-grant proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has changed the face of patent litigation. This monthly digest is designed to keep you up-to-date by highlighting interesting PTAB,...more
As PTAB practitioners know, statistics on successful motions to amend are quite dismal. But in a recent case, the PTAB shed light on what may be a successful strategy for patent owners to amend their claims in an Inter Partes...more
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday, December 18, 2019 could significantly affect strategies for patent ownership in the United States. The Inventors Rights Act (H.R. 5478), which is sponsored by...more
The movie Zootopia was hysterically funny because it equated animal stereotypes to what we encounter every day. For example, the best employee at the DMV was named Flash – who was a sloth. Actually, the entire DMV was run by...more