The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) maintains a list of all PTAB precedential and informative decisions organized by subject matter.[1] These precedential decisions establish “binding authority concerning major policy or procedural issues, or other issues of exceptional importance, including constitutional questions, important issues regarding statutes, rules, and regulations, important issues regarding case
Last month, in OpenSky Industries v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01064 (Oct. 4, 2022), the Director of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a precedential decision regarding abuse of process.
The decision from the Director held that Petitioner OpenSky had abused the IPR process by (1) filing an IPR in an attempt to extract
Earlier this month, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a request for rehearing in Maxlite, Inc. v. Jiaxing Super Lighting Elec. Appl. Co., Ltd., No. IPR2020-00208, Paper 14 (P.T.A.B. June 1, 2021), thereby instituting a previously-denied Inter Partes Review. In the decision, the Board admitted to abusing its discretion in initially denying Institution.
In
Moderna, one of the global leaders in developing a safe and effective vaccine to combat COVID-19, appears poised to get through clinical trials with a vaccine that is based on mRNA technology. As was recently announced, Pfizer demonstrated a 90% effectiveness with its vaccine, which is also based on mRNA technology. If all stays on
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
On Monday, February 24, 2020, in Reactive Surfaces LTD., LLP v. LG Chem LTD., IPR2018-01520, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) allowed substitute claims by granting a motion to amend for the fourth time this year, matching the total number of grants for such motions from 2013 through 2017. This is a growing
On December 11, 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) designated Ex parte Hannun, 2018-003323 (Apr. 1, 2019) as an informative PTAB decision for applying the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (“USPTO”) 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (“2019 PEG”) to determine patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
As laid
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.
Continue Reading PTAB Precedential Opinion Panel Evaluates Standard for Showing Public Accessibility of a Reference
Faced with criticism from legislators and patent owners for perceived serial harassment by patent challengers, on May 7, 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the PTAB” or “the Board”) designated two decisions as “precedential” that arguably expand its discretion to deny petitions in PTAB proceedings.
Previously, in General Plastic Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Canon
On April 16, 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the PTAB” or “the Board”) designated three orders as precedential related to the issue of the incomplete disclosure of “real parties-in-interest” (“RPIs”) at the time of the filing of petitions for post-grant proceedings. These three relatively recent orders—all issued since January 2019—present a range of