Prior Art Wanted—Cash Reward
By Lisa Furby and Dave Maiorana - Recently, Cloudflare Inc. succeeded in convincing the PTAB to institute in IPR2021-00969 against a Sable Network, Inc.’s patent directed toward data flow. While the institution itself is not out of the ordinary—the petitioner,...
Final FY2021 PTAB Statistics Posted
By Sue Gerber and Matt Johnson - The statistics from the PTAB for FY2021 are in, and the total PTAB petitions filed in FY2021 are down a bit from the previous year. A total of 1,401 petitions were filed—IPR (1308) and PGR (93)—compared to 1513 in FY2020, 1464 in...
Limited Experiment Protocol Discovery Granted
By Paxton Lozano* and Matt Johnson - In an inter partes review (IPR), the scope of discovery is expressly stated in the C.F.R. and additional discovery must either be agreed upon by the parties or granted by the Board when it “is necessary in the interest of justice.”...
PTAB Denies IPR Institutions Without Patent Owner Rebuttal Evidence
By Stephanie Mishaga, Joseph Sauer, and Evan McLean - It is no secret that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) often leverages its discretionary denial powers to deny inter parties review (IPR) petitions. The PTAB has discretionarily denied IPR petitions, for...
Deposition Exhibits Allowed With Sur-Replies (Sometimes)
By Grant Hebrank and Josh Nightingale - Under the Board’s rules, a patent owner gets to have the last word in a PTAB proceeding by filing a sur-reply to the petitioner’s reply. Sur-replies may only respond to arguments raised in the reply, and the “sur-reply … may...