Category: Patent Reform
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What’s Important Now in Intellectual Property?
With all that is going on in world events and a pandemic that has raged on for over a year, it’s hard to focus on intellectual property as an important topic to discuss. But we must because innovation has carried on and patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets are still valuable assets that have to…
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Patent Due Diligence and Evaluation After the AIA
Many factors must be considered for due diligence and valuation of a patent portfolio. The patent owner’s desire to have broad claims that capture a large number of infringements must be tempered against its need for claims that will not be deemed invalid in view of prior art. Before the America Invents Act (AIA), patents…
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New PTAB Trial Practice Rules Effective May 2, 2016
On April 1, 2016 the PTO published its final rule on Amendments to the Rules of Practice for Trials Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. A small correction to these Amendments was published on April 27. I presented a summary of these rule changes at the AIPLA Spring Meeting in Minneapolis, MN on May 18, 2016. The…
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New PTAB Rule Changes Published Yesterday
A small number of rule changes were published yesterday which affect all involved in post-grant trials at the USPTO. The fixes make the rules more specific and make for more uniform proceedings. They are effective May 19, 2015. A copy of the Federal Register notice can be found here.
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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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See You at the AIPLA 2014 Spring Meeting!
I am presenting at the AIPLA Spring Meeting on May 15, 2014 in Philadelphia and hope to see you there. My task is to provide strategies for filing inter partes reviews, covered business method reviews and post-grant reviews. I hope to see you there! I just got back from the PLI Post-Grant Conference held in…
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Eastern District of Virginia Decides PTAB Decision to not institute IPR is Not Appealable
A patent owner insists that your company infringes a patent and makes a claim of patent infringement. You have settled patent infringement assertions before, but this patent seems invalid over known prior art. You consult with your patent counsel and a decision is made to file a petition for inter partes review (IPR) under the new post-grant…
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Join Me in San Francisco for PLI’s Post-Grant CLE Program on April 28
I will be presenting at PLI’s “USPTO Post-Grant Patent Trials 2014” CLE Program on April 28th with a number of other post-grant practitioners. Please join us there or attend via webinar! — Timothy Bianchi