In Polaris Innovations Ltd. v. Brent, No. 2019-1483, 2022 WL 4241665 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 15, 2022), the Federal Circuit faced an appeal that had bounced back and forth between the Court and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) several times while it was caught in the administrative ambiguity resulting from the Arthrex decision.
Background
In 2018, Hunting Titan, Inc. filed a petition for inter partes review (“IPR”) of U.S. Patent No. 9,581,422 (“the ’422 patent”), which is owned by DynaEnergetics Europe GmbH, a manufacturer of industrial explosives. In pertinent part, Hunting Titan asserted in its petition that claims 1-15 of the ’422 patent were unpatentable because they were
On January 18, the Supreme Court denied petitions for writs of certiorari from both Apple and Mylan Laboratories. Each company sought to challenge the NHK/Fintiv framework that was developed by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”). As we previously wrote about on this blog in September of last year, the NHK
Late last year, the PTAB published its final round of statistics for 2021. From October 1, 2020 to November 30, 2021, 1629 petitions were filed at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The majority of petitions filed are for Inter Partes Review (IPR), with less than 10% of petitions filed for Post Grant Review
Last month, in the case In re: MaxPower Semiconductor, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the CAFC”) dismissed an appeal by MaxPower Semiconductor, Inc. (“MaxPower”) of four determinations to institute inter partes review (“IPR”) of four of MaxPower’s patents. The majority’s brief opinion states that a decision to institute an IPR
Earlier this month, in the precedential decision Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Facebook Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the CAFC”) upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) on the issue of estoppel (or lack thereof) when multiple parties file multiple, substantially similar petitions challenging a patent’s patentability.
1) The
In 2017, Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) filed two petitions requesting inter parties review (“IPR”) of U.S. Patent No. 9,083,997 (“the ’997 patent”), with the first petition directed to claims 1-19 and the second petition directed to claims 20-35. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) issued two substantially similar Final Written Decisions (IPR2017-00829, IPR2017-00830) that
On October 1, 2019, in Honeywell Int’l Inc. v. Arkema Inc., Appeals 2018-1151, -1153 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 1, 2019), the Federal Circuit held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) abused its discretion by requiring Honeywell Int’l Inc. (“Honeywell”) to show that the requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 255 were met before
The Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling today in Return Mail, Inc. v. Postal Service, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), holding that the United States Government is not a “person” eligible to petition for covered-business-method (“CBM”) review, inter partes review (“IPR”), or post-grant review (“PGR”) America Invents Act (“AIA”) proceedings before the
Article III standing has become a contested and often dispositive issue in appeals from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). For example, as we reported previously, the Federal Circuit has dismissed an inter partes review (IPR) petitioner’s appeal where the petitioner-appellant lost standing by abandoning development of its potentially infringing product.[1] We also