PTABWatch Blog

http://www.ptabwatch.com/author/khogg/

PTABWatch, provided by Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP, analyzes and reports recent developments concerning Post-Grant Proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), including Inter Partes Review (IPR), Post Grant Review (PGR), and Covered Business Method (CBM) proceedings.

Recent Blog Posts

  • Failure To Identify The Difference Makes A Difference There have been a few short articles floating around over the past few years that list the top (usually four or five) mistakes that petitioners have made to doom their IPR/CBM petitions. These articles sometimes refer to the need for the petitioner to pay attention to detail, but then often fail to go into detail about what those details might be. A relatively recent institution decision emphasized one important detail that petitioners had better address if the petition relies on obviousness:... More
  • Petitioner’s Fatal Failure to Dot the “i”s in Allegedly Published Prior Art In Hewlett-Packard Co. v. U.S. Philips Corp., et al., IPR2015-01505, Paper 16 (Jan. 19, 2016), HP’s Petition  asserted that the claims of the patent at issue, US 5,777,992 relating to MPEG audio, were invalid in view of three references, each allegedly a “printed publication”: (1) Chambers; (2) MPEG 89-051; and, (3) MASCAM 1988. In its (optional) response to the Petition the Patent Owner asserted that HP failed to establish that any of these references qualified as a “printed publication.” Indeed,... More
  • PTAB Confronts Issues Raised By IPR Remand From Federal Circuit In issuing a second final decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyconn Inc., IPR2012-00026/ IPR2013-00109, Paper No. 80 (Dec. 9, 2015), the PTAB dealt with a “what do we do now,” both procedurally and substantively, after its initial final decision was reversed in part and remanded “for further proceedings” by the Federal Circuit in an opinion available at 789 F.3d 1292 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The Federal Circuit’s partial reversal and remand stemmed from its conclusion that the PTAB, in its initial... More
  • Don’t Try To Observe Your Own Witness While it is obviously frustrating when an opponent files a paper citing snippets of your own expert’s testimony out of context, a party’s attempt here to right the wrong after the fact was rebuffed by the PTAB and illustrates why mastering the PTAB’s guidelines and prior decisions, and thinking ahead with the same firmly in mind, is paramount. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc. v. Enova Technology Corp., IPR2014-01178, Paper 45 (Oct. 28, 2015). The issue in Seagate arose when the patent... More
  • PTAB Considers Qualifications To Testify Concerning The Understanding of One of Ordinary Skill En route to holding the claims of the challenged patent invalid, the PTAB addressed two issues regarding the qualifications of a declarant providing testimony concerning how one of ordinary skill would understand the applied prior art. U.S. Endoscopy Group, Inc. v. CDX Diagnostics, Inc., IPR2014-00639, Paper 27 (Sept. 14, 2015).  The first issue was whether the declarant needed to be qualified as an “expert” on the relevant subject matter under Fed.R.Evid. 701, 702, at least in instances where the testimony... More
  • PTAB Clarifies Meaning of Prior Art “Of Record” and “Known” In Context of a Motion to Amend – What Now? In MasterImage 3D, Inc. v. RealD Inc., the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reaffirmed that the patent owner bears the burden of establishing the patentability of any amended claims proposed in an AIA trial over two categories of prior art: (a) the “prior art of record” and (b) “prior art known to the patent owner.” IPR2015-00040, Paper 42 (PTAB July 15, 2015). Nothing new there. What is new is the PTAB’s “clarification” of what constitutes such prior art:   “[P]rior art... More
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