Category: Litigation
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Target Corp. Requests Rehearing of Denied IPRs by Expanded PTAB Panel
October 17, 2014 Last month, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) interpreted the IPR joinder provision, 35 U.S.C. § 315(c), to preclude joinder requests by an existing party to an ongoing proceeding. (Target Corp. v. Destination Maternity Corp., IPR2014-00508 and IPR2014-00509.) In these recent decisions, the Board decided that § 315(c) requires “party joinder” and…
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Lex Machina’s 2013 Patent Litigation Report Shows Disparity Between Litigated Patents and those under PTAB Review
Litigation and post-grant proceedings often go hand-in-hand. A new litigation report published by Lex Machina summarizes patent litigation data for 2013 and prior years. It is an interesting report and very easy to digest. Two findings caught my eye. The first one relates to the overall number of patent litigation cases filed in 2013: Plaintiffs filed 6,092…
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USPTO Statistics Show Inter Partes Patent Reviews are Frequently Settled Before Final Board Decision
The U.S. Patent Office regularly posts statistics on post-grant proceedings such as inter partes review and covered business method patent review. An excerpt of PTAB statistics for February 13, 2014 is found below. The acronyms “FWD” and “RAJ” stand for “Final Written Decision on the merits” and “Request for Adverse Judgment.” The “Other” category…
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SAP’s Cert Petition Denied by Supreme Court in Versata Patent Infringement Suit
In earlier posts, I described the $391 million patent infringement judgment awarded to Versata for SAP’s alleged infringement of US Pat. 6,553,350. I also detailed SAP’s attempts to avoid the judgment by challenging the ‘350 patent in the first covered business method patent review conducted by the Patent Office under the America Invents Act. (SAP v.…
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CLE Event: Review of First Year of Patent Office Trials
The America Invents Act provides us several new ways to challenge issued patents. If you are curious about what we have learned in this first year fourteen months of patent office trials, please tune into my hour webinar tomorrow morning (Dec. 12, 2013) at 9 a.m. central. I will be co-presenting with Steve Schaefer of Fish…
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Parties Terminate CBM Before They Settle Dispute to Avoid PTAB Decision
In January of 2013, EZ Shield , Inc sued Harland Clarke Corp. for infringement of U.S. Pat. 8,346,637. The ‘637 patent relates to a system for reimbursement of consumers for losses incurred for specific forms of check fraud. In April of that year Harland Clarke filed a petition for covered business method patent review (CBM2013-00016).…
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WildTangent Files its Supreme Court Certiorari Petition – Part 1
In September of 2009, Ultramercial, Inc. sued WildTangent, Inc., Hulu and YouTube in the Central District of California for alleged patent infringement of U.S. 7,346,545 (the ‘545 patent). The ‘545 patent claims trading advertisement viewing for access to content over the Internet. The Abstract of the ‘545 patent reads: The present invention is directed to…
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PTAB Provides More Guidance on Discovery
On March 5, 2013, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) provided guidance to the bar concerning routine discovery and additional discovery. (See paper 26 in Garmin v. Cuozzo, IPR2012-00001) This decision set forth five factors which are important in determining what constitutes discovery satisfying the “necessary in the interest of justice” standard under 35…