The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the PTAB”) for the United States Patent and Trademark Office recently published a decision on appeal which overturned an Examiner’s rejection in application number 15/322,059. The PTAB held that the Examiner failed to adequately explain how a disputed reference taught the claimed subject matter. Ex parte Kensuke Matsumura, Masayiki
Court of Appeals Affirms PTAB Decision on Person Eligibility for Post-Issuance Review and Patentable Subject Matter
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its decision in Bozeman Financial LLC v. Federal Reserve Bank Of Atlanta, Case No. 19-1018 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 10, 2020) [hereinafter Bozeman], holding that Federal Reserve banks (hereinafter “the Banks”) are people under the AIA, capable of petitioning for post-issuance review. The Court further
PTAB Precedential Opinion Panel Evaluates Standard for Showing Public Accessibility of a Reference
The PTAB’s Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) issued its decision in Hulu, LLC v. Sound View Innovations, LLC, IPR2018-01039, Paper 29 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 20, 2019) [hereinafter Hulu], which addresses the requirement for a petitioner to establish that an asserted reference qualifies as a printed publication for institution of an inter partes review. The PTAB POP determined that Hulu, as the petitioner, had produced sufficient evidence to establish a reasonable likelihood that the disputed reference, Dougherty, was publicly accessible before the critical date of the challenged patent. The POP cited the facts that Dougherty (1) “bears a copyright date of 1990”, (2) has “a printing date of November 1992”, (3) has an ISBN date of 8/94, and (4) is a textbook from an established publisher, O’Reilly, and is part of a well-known book series. Hulu, at 19.
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