Inter Partes Review

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Federal Circuit Affirms Obviousness Decision by Board, Finds No APA Violation Based on New Characterization of Passage Providing Motivation to Combine

In Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. Arthrocare Corp., Appeal No. IPR2016-00918 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 21, 2019), the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision in an IPR to invalidate patent claims on the basis of obviousness, determining that the Board did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by describing the motivation to combine the teachings of the prior art in different language than that used in the petition.  Additionally, the court affirmed the Board’s claim construction as reasonable and found that subjecting a pre-AIA patent to inter partes review was constitutional when the patent issued after the passage of the AIA. 
Continue Reading Federal Circuit Affirms Obviousness Decision by Board, No Violation

In consolidated appeals of a trio of Board decisions canceling pre-AIA patents in inter partes reviews (IPR), the Federal Circuit held “that the retroactive application of IPR proceedings to pre-AIA patents is not an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment.” Celgene Corp. v. Peter, Appeals 2018-1167, -1168, -1169, Slip Op. at 3 (Fed. Cir. July 30, 2019). As we previously discussed (link), the Supreme Court’s decision in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, 138 S. Ct. 1365, 1379 (2018), left open this issue. The Board’s decisions on appeal pre-date Oil States and unsurprisingly, perhaps, Celgene did not therefore raise the issue before the Board. But Celgene and the Patent Office briefed this constitutional issue in the appeal and then addressed it at oral argument to the Federal Circuit’s satisfaction. In further view of the growing number of appeals raising this issue in the wake of Oil States, the court exercised its discretion to decide the issue.
Continue Reading Federal Circuit Addresses Constitutional Issue Supreme Court Left Open

In a recent decision vacating the PTAB’s finding that a draft standard for video coding emailed to a listserv was not publicly accessible, the Federal Circuit again corrected the PTAB’s application of the legal standard to determine the public accessibility of prior art. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Infobridge Pte. Ltd., case no. 2018-2007, 2018-2012, 2019 WL 3047113 (Fed. Cir. July 12, 2019). Although multiple means of accessibility were alleged, the PTAB’s analysis was upheld with respect to all but the listserv distribution.
Continue Reading A Reference is Publicly Accessible if a Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art Could Access the Reference

As we have discussed (here and here), owners of pre-AIA patents may be able to “swear behind” alleged prior art references by providing evidence of an earlier invention date, but the inventors’ testimony concerning conception of the invention must be corroborated by independent evidence. In Kolcraft Enterprises, Inc. v. Graco Children’s Products, Inc., No. 2018-1259 (Fed. Cir. Jul. 2, 2019), the patent owner was unable to swear behind alleged prior art because it did not provide sufficient corroborating evidence.
Continue Reading Corroboration Required to Prove Earlier Invention Date

In May 2019, the PTAB designated precedential two IPR decisions related to its discretion to institute inter partes review.

In Valve Corp. v. Electronic Scripting Products, Inc., the Board denied institution under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a), applying the precedential General Plastic factors to deny institution of a follow-on petition.  See General Plastic Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, IPR2016-01357, Paper 19 17-18 (PTAB Sept. 6, 2017)(precedential) and our post about this case.  The Board determined that all the General Plastic factors weighed against institution.
Continue Reading PTAB Precedential Decisions on Discretion to Institute Inter Partes Review

Recently updated statistics from the USPTO provide little comfort for patent owners seeking to amend claims during an IPR proceeding.  The Motion to Amend Study, Installment 5 through FY2018, updated March 2019, reports that patent owners have filed a motion to amend in 326 of the 3,599 completed trials (9%) and in 90 of the 670 pending trials (13%).  Of the 326 motions filed in completed trials, the Board decided a motion to amend requesting to substitute claims in 205 trials (63%), and of those decided motions, Board granted or granted-in-part a motion to amend in only 21 of the 205 trials (10%).
Continue Reading USPTO to Patent Owners – Don’t Forget About Reexams and Reissues

The Federal Circuit on June 14 affirmed Patent Office decisions in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings canceling patents the University of Minnesota owned, concluding that “state sovereign immunity does not apply to these proceedings.” The court’s conclusion is not limited to instances where, for example, a state university waives its sovereign immunity by asserting a patent in federal court proceedings. One broad import of the court’s holding therefore is that all state university patents are vulnerable to attack in PTO proceedings. Regents of the Univ. of Minn. v. LSI Corp., Appeal 2018-1559 (Fed. Cir. June 14, 2019); Regents of the Univ. of Minn. v. Ericsson Inc., Appeals 2018-1560 et seq. (Fed. Cir. June 14, 2019).

A few months ago, in BTG International Ltd. v. Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, the Federal Circuit invited the Patent Office’s views on the scope of the petitioner estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2). We noted then that this is an estoppel a district court may apply, but the Patent Office may not. In response to the court’s invitation, the Patent Office said that a court may apply this statutory estoppel not only to petitioners who lose an IPR, but also to those who prevail. The Office conceded that estopping prevailing IPR petitioners “leads to the counterintuitive result that a district court would not be able to consider invalidity arguments that the Board found persuasive.” But the Office said that this will have no practical effect in most cases.
Continue Reading Estoppel Remains Malleable

In an unusual fact situation, Judge Andrews of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware held that estoppel stemming from a Final Written Decision of the PTAB could arise even if issued after trial where the court has not yet entered final judgment on the relevant ground. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Par Pharmaceutical Inc., Case No. 14cv1289 (D. Del. April 11, 2019).
Continue Reading Estoppel May Arise After Trial

The nature of any inter partes dispute apparently is to engage in even a seemingly mundane dispute. After all, that’s the dispute that may lead you to success, right? Perhaps then there is nothing surprising in an April 3, 2019, Patent Trial and Appeal Board order concerned about whether a book qualifies as prior art. That order, issued by the Board’s new “Precedential Opinion Panel,” grants an aggrieved petitioner’s request for rehearing of an earlier Board decision refusing to institute inter partes review because the petitioner apparently did not establish a book bearing a 1990 (or 1991) copyright date was publicly available before the 1995 date on which the application for the subject patent was filed. Hulu, LLC v. Sound View Innovations, LLC, Case IPR2018-01039 (Apr. 1, 2019) (order).
Continue Reading Is that Prior Art?

Resources & Info

Arthrex and the Supreme Court Resource Center

In United States v. Arthrex, Inc., the Supreme Court has heard whether 125+ PTAB decisions rendered through October 2019 must be remanded for new decisions. Read about how that issue developed through our post.

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Our Team

PTABWatch, provided by Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP, analyzes and reports recent developments concerning Post-Grant Proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), including Inter Partes Review (IPR), Post Grant Review (PGR), and Covered Business Method (CBM) proceedings.