In an attempt to challenge the patentability of an issued claim, petitioners every so often come across a prior art reference that discloses all the recited features of the claim at-hand except for one limitation. Rather than bringing in another reference to teach that one limitation, petitioners sometimes merely refer to the knowledge and creativity
How Many References Is Too Many for Challenging a Patent on Obviousness?
Posted in About the PTAB
The PTAB does not appear to have weighed in, one way or another, on the question of how many references is too many for an obviousness challenge under 35 U.S.C. § 103—at least not explicitly. Implicitly, the PTAB has regularly instituted inter partes review of patents where four or more references have been used to…
PTAB: No Chance to Re-characterize Disclosures of Reference in IPRs
By Spencer J. Johnson on
Posted in PTAB Decisions
Final Written Decisions were entered on March 7, 2017 in 6 IPRs brought by Qualcomm Inc. against ParkerVision, Inc (IPR2015-01828, -01829, -01831, -01832, -01833, and -01834). These 6 IPRs all challenged patent 6,091,940 (the ’940 patent), a patent directed to methods and systems where a signal with a lower frequency is up-converted to a higher…