Patent Law Practice Center

Patent Reform Passes in House of Representatives

The Innovation Act (HR 3309) was introduced on October 23, 2013; was marked-up on November 20, 2013; and by a vote of 325-91, passed in the United States House of Representatives on Thursday, December 5, 2013. This fast-tracking of the Innovation Act was despite bipartisan concerns raised by Judiciary Committee Members who urged Congressman Goodlatte (R-VA), who is Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to slow the bill down for additional consideration and hearings.

Despite efforts of many in the House, the Innovation Act as passed includes fee-shifting provisions, which provide that the loser of a patent infringement litigation would have to pay the attorneys’ fees of the winner unless the loser’s positions were objectively reasonable. One of the most watched amendments to the Innovation Act had been the amendment submitted by Congressman Mel Watt (D-NC), which would have stripped the fee-shifting provisions from the Act. The Watt amendment lost by a vote of 213-199. Those who opposed deviating from the American Rule and adopting the British Rule (i.e., loser pays) are hopeful that the closeness of the vote on the Watt amendment will cause the Senate to take a closer, more thoughtful look.

Another provision of the Innovation Act that received much discussion, in the limited window available at least, was the change to the estoppel provisions that apply to post-grant review and inter partes review. The America Invents Act (AIA) included estoppel provisions that would prevent those challenging patents, as well as those in privy with them, from raising serial challenges by saying that they could not challenge the same patent claims again based on any prior art that was raised or could have been raised. The Innovation Act removes the “or could have been raised,” which all but certainly suggests that serial patent challenges will become possible, if not likely.

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New Inter Partes Review Grounds To Stay Most Patent Litigation?

Written by Scott McKeown, Partner at Oblon Spivak and Practice Center Contributor.

Estoppel Provisions Disfavor Parallel Proceedings

During a  [recent] webinar on post grant USPTO proceedings, I compared the current estoppel provisions of inter partes patent reexamination to that ofInter Partes Review. The Inter PartesReview (IPR) estoppel provisions are similar in some respects to the currentinter partes patent reexamination (IPX) provisions, but differ in significant respects.

In some ways, the new estoppel provisions are designed to address shortcomings of the existing IPX estoppel provisions. For example, whileIPX estoppel does not apply to ITC proceedings, the IPR provisions extend estoppel to ITC proceedings. Additionally, while the IPX provisions use the terminology “raised or could have raised,” the new IPR provisions recite “raised or reasonably could have raised during Inter Partes Review.” Ostensibly, this language softening is designed to provide some slight wiggle room to account for the late found reference in a far away library of Siberia.

Of perhaps much greater interest however is the aspect of IPR estoppel that may compel judges to stay a parallel litigation pending IPR. (more…)