By Matt Johnson

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has released AIA trial filing and disposition numbers for July 2017.  Filings remain near the 150 mark, with 138 total trials being requested in July, 135 of those being requests for Inter Partes Review.  This is down from 207 total filings in June and the FY high in January of 246 total filings.  Total post-grant filings to date for FY 2017, which ends September 30, are already at 1650 petitions.  This projects to 1980 petitions for the year, which would be a record, where 1897 petitions were filed in FY 2015.

The trial institution rate has continued to slide from an early high of near 90%, with just over 63% of petitions resulting in instituted trials so far in FY 2017, down from a 67% rate in FY 2016.

Since PTAB trials were introduced in 2012 there have been 1674 Final Written Decisions.  Twenty-two of those Final Written Decisions were issued in July 2017.  Of those 22 decisions 8 (36.3%) found no instituted claims unpatentable and 13 (59%) found all instituted claims unpatentable.

The full set of July 2017 PTAB statistics can be accessed here.

The following two tabs change content below.
Matt Johnson is one of the Firm's primary contacts on practice before the PTAB. Currently co-chairing the Firm's PTAB subpractice and involved in proceedings at the Board since the first day of their availability in September 2012, Matt regularly represents clients as both petitioners and patent owners at the Board. He further works as an advocate for clients in appeals from Board proceedings at the Federal Circuit.