Tag: Bianchi
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Are Patent-Friendly PTAB Decisions On the Rise?
Patent litigation changed with passage of the America Invents Act. Overnight the PTAB became a new venue for challenging patent claims using IPRs, CBMs and PGRs. The initial reaction by the patent bar to the PTAB’s “take charge” approach to instituting review and canceling patent claims was met with approval by businesses under attack by…
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PTAB Dismisses Three IPR Petitions Based on Sovereign Immunity
Covidien LP had a license to U.S. Patent 7,062,251, owned by the University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF, Patent Owner). UFRF alleged breach of contract by Covidien, and sued Covidien in Florida state court for breach of license. Covidien counterclaimed for a declaratory judgment that it does not infringe the ’251 patent, and removed the…
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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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4 Tips to Make Your Patent Portfolio AIA-Ready
The America Invents Act (AIA) has changed the way that patents are enforced. In traditional patent litigation, a patent was drafted to perform in district court. After the AIA, when patents are asserted, they are first challenged in administrative proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). These proceedings, called IPRs (inter partes reviews), PGRs…
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Supreme Court’s Stryker/Halo Decision Makes it Easier for Courts to Award Enhanced Damages In Patent Infringement Cases
The recent Supreme Court decisions in the Stryker and Halo cases just made it easier for courts to award enhanced damages in patent infringement cases, discarding Seagate’s “objective recklessness” test. The Seagate Test In 2007, the Federal Circuit announced a test for enhanced damages whereby a plaintiff seeking enhanced damages had to show that the infringement of his patent was…
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PTAB Relies on the Federal Circuit’s Recent § 101 Decision to Deny CBM Institution
On May 12, 2016, the Federal Circuit issued a decision on 101 patent eligibility that overturned a summary judgment finding of § 101 invalidity for software used for databases. Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 2015-1244, 2016 WL 2756266 (Fed. Cir. May 12, 2016). The Enfish v. Microsoft decision interpreted the “abstract idea” first prong of…
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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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Federal Circuit Employs Phillips Claim Construction to Measure Claims Amended in Reexamination for Possible Intervening Rights
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in Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, claim challenges, Claim Construction, clear and convincing evidence, covered business methods, Damages, Ex Parte Prosecution, Federal Circuit, inter partes review, intervening rights, Litigation, past damages, Phillips claim construction, Post Grant Review, preponderance of evidence, prior art, reexamination generallyWhen patent owners sue an accused infringer for patent infringement, one way for the accused infringer to avoid liability is to show noninfringement of the patent claims. But if the claims are extremely broad, the accused infringer may find it difficult to prove noninfringement and instead may have to rely on a showing of invalidity to avoid…
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IPRs And Settlement of Patent Infringement Cases
The passage of the AIA is still relatively recent, yet statistics are starting to emerge that demonstrate the effective use of IPRs to settle patent infringement cases. IAM magazine recently published an interesting report by Unified Patents showing that IPRs have the effect of increasing the median time to settle litigations (from 211 to 420 days), but when viewed…
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Federal Circuit Reinforces PTAB’s Authority to Institute Trial on Selected Claims in Synopsis v. Mentor Graphics Appeal
Newcomers to post-grant proceedings are often surprised by the PTAB’s claim-by-claim approach to patent challenges under the America Invents Act. When reporting statistics about IPRs, commentators tend to ignore these considerations: First, an IPR petition can be drafted to challenge all or some of the claims of a patent. So the set of challenged claims can be less…