Patent Law Practice Center

Understanding Post-Grant Review

Last week, I published an article about inter partes review on IPWatchdog.com. Patent Office statistics for FY 2013 and FY 2014 show that there have been a total of 361 decisions on IPR petitions, with 288 trials instituted. There have been 11 cases that have been joined and only 62 petitions denied, which corresponds with an 82.8% IPR petition grant rate. Having said this, the IPR grant rate during FY 2013 was 87.2%, while so far during FY 2014, the IPR grate rate has been 77.2%.

But what about post-grant review?

Both inter partes review and post-grant review became a reality when “Phase 2” of the America Invents Act (AIA) became effective on September 16, 2012. But you haven’t seen any post-grant reviews yet, aside from the quasi-post-grant review known as covered business method (CBM) review. That is because the post-grant review provisions apply only to patents issued from applications that have an effective filing date on or after March 16, 2013.  Said another way, post-grant review proceedings are only available to patents issuing from applications subject to first-inventor-to-file provisions of the AIA.

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Post-Grant USPTO Proceedings Seminar Live Blog: Patent Trial, Appeal Board Transformation & AIA Implementation

Welcome to the Post-Grant USPTO Proceedings Seminar live blog! This morning’s panel is entitled Patent Trial, Appeal Board Transformation and AIA Implementation. The panel’s moderator is Oblon, Spivak Partner and seminar co-chair Scott A. McKeown, and the featured panelists are Hon. Robert Clarke, Chief of Staff, United States Patent and Trademark Office, Office of Patent Legal Administration, Oblon, Spivak’s Stephen G. Kunin, and  Irem Yucel, Director of the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU), USPTO. Here are some highlights:

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