Seeking District Court Assistance For An IPR Proceeding
By Marc Blackman Discovery is limited in inter partes review proceedings. As we previously discussed here and here, discovery is available only “in the interest of justice,” and requests for discovery frequently are denied. Yet, a party may be aware of information...
PTAB Flushes Airplane Lavatory Patent On On-Sale Bar
By Christian Platt, John Evans, and Kerry Barrett On October 23, 2018, the PTAB found unpatentable B/E Aerospace’s U.S. Design Patent No. D764,031 (“’031 patent”). C&D Zodiac, Inc. v. B/E Aerospace, Inc., PGR2017-00019, Paper 37 (PTAB Oct. 23, 2018). The ’031...
High Court to Tackle Whether Government Can Petition PTAB
By: Emily Tait UPDATE: Oral Argument was held in this case in February 2019. On October 26, 2018, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Return Mail, Inc. v. United States Postal Service, et al. (17-1594) to address whether the U.S. government is a “person” who may...
New PTAB Pilot Program for Claim Amendments
By Cary Miller, Ph.D. The USPTO has proposed a pilot program intended to make it easier to amend claims before the PTAB. (See the USPTO’s Request for Comments on Motion to Amend Practice and Procedures in Trial Proceedings under the America Invents Act before the...
Revised Standard Operating Procedure 2 and the New Path to PTAB Precedent
By Doug Pearson Prior to the USPTO’s issuance of revised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 2 on September 20, 2018 (available here), designation of Board decisions as Precedential or Informative required, among other things, nomination of a decision to the Chief...