On Winter’s eve, the Board’s Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) finally answered a question it posed in an April order: “What is required for a petitioner to establish that an asserted reference qualifies as [a] ‘printed publication’ at the institution stage?” As we earlier noted, the April order granted an aggrieved petitioner’s request for rehearing of a Board decision refusing to institute inter partes review because the petitioner apparently did not establish a book bearing a 1990 copyright date was publicly available before the 1995 date on which the application for the subject patent was filed. The case is Hulu, LLC v. Sound View Innovations, LLC, Case IPR2018-01039, Paper 29 (PTAB Dec. 20, 2019) (precedential).
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