Now that we are in the second week of post-issuance review filings, a number of filings are showing on the Patent Review Processing System (PRPS).  To date there are 18 reviews, of which 6 are covered business method (CBM) patent reviews, and 12 are inter partes reviews (IPRs).  The following listing is current as of Sunday, September 23, 2012:

The exact information on PRPS will change from time to time and you must inform your docketing staff that it would not be wise to rely on the PRPS information screens alone.  For example, in CBM2012-00005 you will see that the filing date noted on the image above is September 21, 2012, however, an order has been issued by the PTAB that changes it to September 16, 2012 based on a motion by the Petitioner that was granted (effectively) today.  It remains to be seen if PRPS will be updated, but the important take-away is that changes will occur after the initial filing that may affect the review and these changes must be tracked.  Docketing support cannot rely solely on information in the summary screens, as demonstrated here.

The PTAB did institute the software update to PRPS that I noted in my blog of last week, so now you can review up to 20 documents when you expand a matter.  I believe the portal is still having difficulties showing more than 20 documents right now, because when you go to the next page of documents the system may freeze.  However, I am sure this is being worked on and will be fixed soon.

One other note for PRPS users is that the “Trial Number” search query appears to be case-sensitive, so if you are searching for CBMs, do not enter “cbm” in the Trial Number field.