#ptab

#ptab

Stewart told Quinn that she felt 'right out of the gate [after the AIA], we got off on the wrong foot with discretionary denials.'... The petitions were treated as if they were going to be instituted unless the patent owner could prove why they shouldn't be... 'Patent owners were already behind before the proceeding started. We just tried to level the playing field.'

The PTAB is likely to undergo a dramatic transformation in 2026 based upon the convergence of two parallel developments. (1) The ex parte appeal inventory has plummeted from approximately 27,000 pending appeals in FY2012 to under 3,000 today, with the trajectory suggesting near-zero inventory within months. (2) Simultaneously, Director John Squires has effectively shut down inter partes review through aggressive use of institution denials.

The Federal Circuit heard oral argument today in Apple Inc. v. Squires, 24-1864, a long-running challenge to the USPTO's Fintiv discretionary denial framework. Apple, Cisco, Google, and Intel argue that the NHK-Fintiv rule should have been adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) rather than through precedential Board designations.

Samsung had petitioned for IPR of ST Case1Tech's always-on recording patents, arguing that the claimed "audio forensics analysis system" encompassed speech-to-text functionality disclosed in the prior art. Before the Board, Case1Tech argued that "analysis" means "calculation of noise dosage" using a specific measurement used for hearing protection. After losing at the Board, Case1Tech altered its position on appeal, arguing that audio forensics analysis merely "includes" noise dosage calculation and encompasses any "analysis that uses all captured acoustic data."

"[Grantham's] post deliberately ignores the critical point that the GAO reports' equating the numerically high invalidation at the PTAB with the numerical invalidity rate underlying issued patents the fallacy that my article explains." This is a response to Robert Grantham's recent post titled " Patents Subjected to IPRs are the Perfect Vehicle to Assess the USPTO's Patent Quality Problem." This post claims to challenge my recent article titled " Fallacy Dispelled: Invalidation Rates of Adjudicated Patents Convey Nothing About Quality of All Issued Patents." However

The fact that patents subjected to an inter partes review (IPR) are "specially selected" is the very reason that this class of patents are a suitable vehicle for studying the cited evidence. The actual evidence cited is what determines "the underlying actual quality of issued patents." Understanding how patent information evidence is missed during examination will identify the root cause of examination errors, both allowance errors and rejection errors.

One of my little joys this past summer was a brown sugar cold foam cold brew from Starbucks, most often purchased after a strenuous sculling session. Simpler in both construction and calories than a frappuccino, but with the same instantaneous burst of sugary delight on the initial sip, each drink was a hit of warm-weather pleasure to savor. For the first few sips (gulps) the brown sugar cold foam overwhelmed,

This week, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart posted another round of Director Discretionary Denial decisions to the PTAB Decisions page, almost all of which denied institution to America Invents Acts (AIA) patent validity trials. Stewart's recent rulings generally confirm the trend so far that a patent owner's settled expectations with respect to patents that have been in force for six years or more hold significant weight, although in two cases this trend was bucked.

Any suggestion that USPTO patent examination quality is a controlling factor in the high rate of patent invalidation in the district courts and at the PTAB is a fallacy that should be rejected and excised with prejudice from all discourse on USPTO examination quality. About half of the patents adjudicated in district courts and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) are found invalid.