New Developments in Obviousness-Type Double Patenting and Original Patent Requirements — Patents: Post-Grant Podcast
Inter Partes Review: Validity Before the PTAB
For the first time in nearly 15 years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued “Updated Guidance for Making a Proper Determination of Obviousness” under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in KSR Int’l Co. v....more
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently updated its guidance for patent examiners and applicants in determining obviousness under 35 USC § 103, based on the US Supreme Court’s ruling in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex...more
All three of the challenges that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted in 2022 resulted in a final written decision canceling the challenged patent. Two of the three final written decisions rendered in 2023 are...more
Penumbra, Inc. v. Rapidpulse, Inc., IPR2021-01466, Paper 34 (P.T.A.B. March 10, 2023) In a PTAB decision that was recently designated precedential, the Board made two important decisions concerning provisional patent...more
On November 15, 2023, Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Kathi Vidal designated as precedential the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) final written decision in Penumbra, Inc. v. RapidPulse,...more
In 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) did not issue any final written decisions involving design patents. However, it did issue three decisions granting review of challenged design patents and three decisions...more
As part of the recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took steps to return to normal operations. It began requiring live oral arguments in August 2022 and, by November,...more
In Victaulic Company v. ASC Engineered Sols., LLC, the District of Delaware ruled on summary judgment that ASC is estopped from asserting two obviousness grounds against a patent claim because it raised the same grounds...more
If you don’t appeal an issue from an adverse judgment, are you going to be bound by the decision on that issue in future cases? This can often be an important question to consider when deciding whether and what issues to...more
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit considered whether the Patent Commissioner, on assuming the role of the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) Director, can constitutionally evaluate the rehearing of...more
The so-called “Lead Compound Analysis” is the primary legal framework for assessing chemical obviousness. Despite the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) initial apparent reluctance to operate under this framework,...more
The USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has increasingly used its discretionary denial authority in recent years. Although the PTAB’s discretion under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a) and Fintiv grabbed many headlines in 2021, the...more
Love it or hate it, ignore the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at your peril. The introduction of the PTAB as part of the America Invents Act over ten years ago has forever changed patent litigation. In its first...more
[co-author: Jamie Dohopolski] Love it or hate it, ignore the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at your peril. The introduction of the PTAB as part of the America Invents Act over ten years ago has forever changed...more
SynQor, Inc. appealed the inter partes reexamination decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) holding un- patentable as obvious original claims 1–19, 28, and 31 of SynQor’s patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,072,190 as...more
[co-author: Jamie Dohopolski] Last year, the continued global COVID-19 pandemic forced American courts to largely continue the procedures set in place in 2020. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was no...more
Joint inventorship has been called "one of the muddiest concepts in the muddy metaphysics of patent law" because the "exact parameters of what constitutes joint inventorship are quite difficult to define." Mueller Brass Co....more
The Federal Circuit, and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals before it, generally reviewed decisions by the Patent and Trademark Office under the same standard applied to district court decisions, whether the factual...more
In a relatively unusual outcome, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board (Board) decision finding non-obviousness in an inter partes review (IPR). Becton, Dickinson, and Co. v....more
We hope our readers had a restful Memorial Day Weekend. Even DC’s cicadas took the weekend off. Before the long weekend, the Federal Circuit left us with 3 precedential opinions, including one addressing what qualifies as...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that facilitating browsing of documents on a website was sufficient to support public accessibility of prior art references, but that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board...more
While much has been written about the effect of the post-grant review provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (2012) in invalidating U.S. patents, the change in the law most responsible for how easy it has become to...more
Although the Federal Circuit has had a busy January, last week was light on precedential decisions (just one, in a case from the MSPB). Below we provide our usual weekly statistics and our case of the week—our highly...more
Affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) non-obviousness determination, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the Board did not abuse its discretion in sanctioning a patent owner who engaged in...more
The availability of post-grant proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has changed the face of patent litigation. This monthly digest is designed to keep you up-to-date by highlighting interesting PTAB,...more