The Board’s decisions in Liberty Mutual (CBM2012-00003) denying grounds raised in a petition for covered business method patent review are momentous in several respects. The Orders, denying 196 of the 422 grounds of patentability raised against 20 claims, were issued only about 5 weeks after the petition was filed. The Order specifying redundancies objected to [...]
Read more →Are some patents exempt from post-grant attack under the America Invents Act? The USPTO comments on post-grant trials suggest that the Office may “exercise its discretion” to refuse to review a patent on the simple basis that it would be too much work in too little time for the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The [...]
Read more →The final Patent Trial Practice Guide makes significant revisions to the original proposed version, and presents a comprehensive but concise summary that provides the best introduction to procedure in post-grant trials. In the next few years, the Guide and detailed USPTO responses to comments on the final Trial Practice Rules will provide the most significant [...]
Read more →The USPTO comments on proposed rules for post-grant proceedings under the America Invents Act include estimates of the comparative costs of inter partes review, post-grant review, and district court patent litigation. Not surprisingly, the costs of challenging patent validity in the USPTO are expected to be a fraction of the expenses of a comparable district [...]
Read more →Under the America Invents Act, any person who is not the owner of a patent may seek inter partes review or post-grant review in the USPTO, avoiding the jurisdictional case-or-controversy requirement that has limited district court declaratory judgment actions seeking to invalidate patents. The post-grant opposition provisions will transform U.S. patent litigation, by providing an [...]
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