Making Post Grant Extremely Expensive for Challengers

The America Invents Act (AIA) created three new ways to challenge the validity of claims in already-issued patents. The AIA was signed into law on September 16, 2011, but the new post grant proceedings did not become available until one year after the signing, on September 16, 2012. These three new post grant proceedings are post-grant review, inter partes review, and covered business method review (the latter a variety of post-grant review that is limited to business methods relating to the financial industry).

Inter partes review has been extraordinarily popular due to the fact that the rules are stacked in favor of the challenger. Indeed, recently, Scott McKeown (a partner at Oblon Spivak and co-chair of the Oblon post grant practice group) wrote on his blog that the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) “offers unprecedented speed with none of the patentee safeguards of the district court.” The biggest safeguard that a patentee enjoys at the district court is a presumption of validity. The presumption of validity does not attach in a post grant administrative proceeding. That’s a significant benefit to the challenger.

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09.11.14 | America Invents Act, Patent Issues, Post Grant Review | Gene Quinn

Top 5 Patent Law Blog Posts of the Week

Today we continue our weekly installment highlighting the best of the patent blogosphere from the past week. If there are any patent blogs you think should be highlighted by our Top 5, please comment on this post and we’ll check them out.

1) Patently-O: Supreme Court: No Move Yet on Denying Human Gene Patents – This post discusses the Myriad gene patent case. In particular, the post provides the procedural history and current status of the case asking issuing the question of whether or not human genes are patentable.

2) Foss Patents: After Apple, Microsoft Also Files an EU Antitrust Complaint Against Motorola Mobility Over FRAND Abuse – This post outlines potential impact of the two industry leaders’ complaints against MMI with the European Commission. The post also sheds light on the new and growing phenomenon of “FRAND abuse tourism”: companies like Samsung and Motorola start litigation in places like Germany only because they see better chances of winning injunctions based on standard-essential patents than, for example, in the United States. (more…)

02.24.12 | posts | Mark Dighton