by Dennis Crouch

United States v. Arthrex, — S.Ct. — (2021)

The Supreme Court has confirmed that PTAB Judges yield unreviewable authority during inter partes review and therefore acting as Principal Officers under the US Constitution. Therefore the APJs should have been nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

BUT, the Court solved the problem in a new way–by making PTAB determinations reviewable by the USPTO Director.  This leaves the PTAB system in-place, but will place major insider political pressure on the PTO Director (and current Acting Director).

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf

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One irony here is that the person with new political accountability is Drew Hirshfeld.  Although he is sitting in the Director’s seat, Hirshfeld was not appointed as PTO Director by anyone. Although the Supreme Court refers to him as “Acting Director,” the administration has taken pains to clearly state that he is not the acting director. Rather, Hirshfeld’s title is a person “Performing the functions and duties of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO.”

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Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Majority Opinion.

• Parts I and II Concludes that APJs were acting as Principal Officers.  This portion was joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. (5 Justices)
• Part III provides a judicial remedy by rewriting the statute to give the USPTO Director power to directly review PTAB decisions. That portion was only joined by Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. (only 4 Justices).  However, Justice Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan agreed in a separate opinion that the remedy was proper (although they disagreed about whether it was needed at all).

Justice Gorsuch disagreed with the remedy — He would have simply set-aside the PTAB decisions and let Congress fix the problem.

Justice Thomas dissented from the whole majority approach – finding that Congress expressly identified APJs as inferior officers and that they are two steps below the president (i.e., pretty far down on the chain).  “For the very first time, this Court holds that Congress violated the Constitution by vesting the appointment of a federal officer in the head of a department.”  In addition, Justice Thomas argued that the remedy is inappropriate: “If the Court truly believed administrative patent judges are principal officers, then the Court would need to vacate the Board’s decision.”

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It is telling that Chief Justice Roberts opinion does not begin with a discussion of “rights” but rather Congressional intent to create “a workable patent system.” Here, the court attempts to keep the train on the tracks, but does create real potential trouble by placing the USPTO Director in the political cross-hairs.

This case focuses on Inter Partes Revew proceedings that are decided by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) whose Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) are appointed by the Secretary of Commerce.  This setup though has a Constitutional problem because APJs issue opinions on behalf of the U.S. Government in cases involving private property interests potentially worth billions of dollars. An individual with that power is an Officer of the United States and must generally be appointed by the US President and Confirmed by the Senate, just like is done with Federal Judges and heads of office.  We obviously have some big due process problems when improperly appointed judges issue opinions deciding rights.

Regarding the Appointments Clause, Hamilton wrote that the President should appoint the officers so that the President can be held directly accountable for the good and the bad. “[S]ole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation.” The Federalist No. 77.

In its opinion, the Federal Circuit found that APJ’s were improperly appointed, but then issued a savings-severance.  The appellate court invalidated the tenure protections for APJs guaranteed by statute and concluded that was enough to reduce APJs to inferior officers who did not need presidential appointment.  On reflection, the Supreme Court wrote “This satisfied no one.”

Edmond v. United States, 520 U. S. 651 (1997), is Supreme Court’s key case-on-point regarding principal-officer vs inferior-officer vs no-officer-at-all.  Here, the court applied Edmond – finding that the PTO Director has substantial authority over APJs – finding that “he is the boss” in most ways.  BUT, there is one big exception, the PTAB director does not have authority to review the actual APJ decisions.

He is the boss, except when it comes to the one thing that makes the APJs officers exercising “significant authority” in the first place—their power to issue decisions on patentability.

Slip Op.  The Appointments Clause requires politically accountable individuals be responsible in a way that leads directly to the President, and the current setup does not allow for that result. “[T]he public can only wonder ‘on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures ought really to fall.'” Slip Op., quoting The Federalist No. 70.  The court also looked to the history of the U.S. Patent System:

When it comes to the patent system in particular, adjudication has followed the traditional rule that a principal officer, if not the President himself, makes the final decision on how to exercise executive power. Recall that officers in President Washington’s Cabinet formed the first Patent Board in 1790. 1 Stat. 109–110. The initial determination of patentability was then relegated to the courts in 1793, but when the Executive Branch reassumed authority in 1836, it was the Commissioner of Patents appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate—who exercised control over the issuance of a patent. The patent system, for nearly the next hundred years, remained accountable to the President through the Commissioner, who directed the work of his subordinates by, for example, hearing appeals from decisions by examiners-in-chief, the forebears of today’s APJs.

Slip Op. All of this leads to the conclusion that APJs are acting like principal officers:

We hold that the unreviewable authority wielded by APJs during inter partes review is incompatible with their appointment by the Secretary to an inferior office.

Note here that the court does not exactly state that “APJs are principal officers” but only that they are acting as such when deciding IPRs.  Regardless, it is improper for them to act-as-such because they are not principal officers.

For a solution, the court rejecting the Federal Circuit’s approach because it does not solve the unreviewability problem.  The Supreme Court offers its own solution: “Decisions by APJs must be subject to review by the Director.”  Here is what the court tells us: Once the PTAB makes its decision, the PTO Director then has the power to review the case and “reach his own decision.” The PTO director’s decision is then reviewable in court.

When reviewing such a decision by the Director, a court must decide the case “conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law” placing restrictions on his review authority in violation of Article II. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 178 (1803).

Slip Op. The Supreme Court also makes clear that its decision only directly applies to IPR proceedings. “We do not address the Director’s supervision over other types of adjudications conducted by the PTAB, such as the examination process for which the Director has claimed unilateral authority to issue a patent.”

On remand, the Supreme Court is not requiring the PTAB to rehear any of the prior decisions. But, the PTO Director will need to issue decisions in each case indicating whether or not the office will be rehearing the case.

In deciding the cases, the PTO Director should be careful to avoid calling it a rehearing since “Only the Patent Trial and Appeal Board may grant rehearings.” 35 U.S.C. 6.

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Big questions for the patent system going forward: how does this Director-Review work and how much political lobbying is appropriate?

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I noted above that Part III – the remedy portion – of Chief Justice Robert’s opinion only garnered four votes. Not a majority.  However, Justice Breyer wrote a separate opinion joined by two others that “agree with its remedial holding.”  I have not parsed through how this statement differs from simply joining Part III.

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The court notes and the Thompson v. Haight decision from Judge Van Ness that I quoted a couple of weeks ago:

Judge William Van Ness—who before taking the bench had served as second to Aaron Burr in his duel with Alexander Hamilton—lamented that Congress had left the door “open and unguarded” for imposters to secure patents, with the consequences of “litigation and endless trouble, if not total ruin, to the true inventor.” Thompson v. Haight, 23 F. Cas. 1040, 1041–1042 (No. 13,957) (CC SDNY 1826). Congress heeded such concerns by returning the initial determination of patentability to the Executive Branch, see 5 Stat. 117–118, where it remains today.

Slip Op.

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One interesting bit I saw in the opinion was the note that the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) was “an entity within the Executive branch until 1958.”  In Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438 (1929), the Supreme Court called the CCPA a “legislative court and not a constitutional court.” As such, there was no standing requirement under Article III of the Constitution. “Even if the  proceeding is not such a case or controversy, the Court of Customs Appeals, being a legislative court, may be invested with jurisdiction of it.”  In 1958, Congress overturned that decision with a statement that the CCPA “is hereby declared to be a court established under article III of the Constitution
of the United States.”  72 Stat. 848.

The USPTO is seeking comments on its rules for instituting AIA trials — especially cases involving multiple AIA petitions against the same patents.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/20/2020-22946/request-for-comments-on-discretion-to-institute-trials-before-the-patent-trial-and-appeal-board

Comments due by Nov 19, 2020

The following comes from the Request for Comments:

ISSUES FOR COMMENT

The USPTO seeks comments on considerations for instituting AIA trials as it relates to serial and parallel AIA petitions, as well as proceedings in other tribunals. The questions enumerated below are a preliminary guide to aid the USPTO in collecting relevant information to assist in modifications, if any, to its current practices, and in the development of any possible rulemaking on this subject. The questions should not be taken as an indication that the USPTO has taken a position or is predisposed to any particular views. The USPTO welcomes comments from the public on any issues believed to be relevant to these topics, and is particularly interested in answers to the following questions:

Serial Petitions

1. Should the Office promulgate a rule with a case-specific analysis, such as generally outlined in General Plastic, Valve I, Valve II and their progeny, for deciding whether to institute a petition on claims that have previously been challenged in another petition?

2. Alternatively, in deciding whether to institute a petition, should the Office (a) altogether disregard whether the claims have previously been challenged in another petition, or (b) altogether decline to institute if the claims have previously been challenged in another petition?

Parallel Petitions

3. Should the Office promulgate a rule with a case-specific analysis, such as generally outlined in the Consolidated Trial Practice Guide, for deciding whether to institute more than one petition filed at or about the same time on the same patent?

4. Alternatively, in deciding whether to institute more than one petition filed at or about the same time on the same patent, should the Office (a) altogether disregard the number of petitions filed, or (b) altogether decline to institute on more than one petition?

Proceedings in Other Tribunals

5. Should the Office promulgate a rule with a case-specific analysis, such as generally outlined in Fintiv and its progeny, for deciding whether to institute a petition on a patent that is or has been subject to other proceedings in a U.S. district court or the ITC?

6. Alternatively, in deciding whether to institute a petition on a patent that is or has been subject to other proceedings in district court or the ITC, should the Office (a) altogether disregard such other proceedings, or (b) altogether decline to institute if the patent that is or has been subject to such other proceedings, unless the district court or the ITC has indicated that it will stay the action?

Other Considerations

7. Whether or not the Office promulgates rules on these issues, are there any other modifications the Office should make in its approach to serial and parallel AIA petitions, proceedings in other tribunals, or other use of discretion in deciding whether to institute an AIA trial?

by D.Crouch

The Senate IP Subcommittee heard testimony today on the topic of patent quality:

Promoting the Useful Arts: How can Congress prevent the issuance of poor quality patents?

Testimony from PTO Commissioner Drew Hirshfeld; Professors Polk Wagner, Melissa Freeney Wasserman, Colleen Chien; and Former PTO Acting Driector Teresa Stanek Rea.  Sen. Tillis began with his remarks with a statement that about the “madness” of patent eligibility, including the Chamberlain case that found a garage door opener to lack patent eligibility. “No one can blame the USPTO” for this situated by the courts. That said, Sen. Tellis is looking for a consensus option.

In his testimony, Commissioner Hirshfeld began with an interesting statement on new examiner time allotment program:

Starting this month, all examiners began receiving additional examination time tailored to specific attributes of an application, including the overall number of claims, the length of the specification, and the number of pages in any filed information disclosure statements. Also starting this month, examiners with the least amount of examination time in our production system also began receiving additional time to align their time allotments with the requirements for current patent examination.

Beginning next fiscal year, we will utilize an updated process for assigning patent applications to patent examiners. This process will automatically match each application to the examiner best suited to examine the application, taking into account the complete technological profile of the applications, the work experience of each patent examiner, and the workload balancing needs of the agency.

[Hirshfeld Testimony].

Prof. Wagner:

One lesson here, I think, is to tread quite carefully when seeking to improve patent quality. The small firms and individuals who desperately need the patent system to bridge the gap between great idea and successful technology can be (and often are) disproportionately impacted by reforms that are of little consequence for large companies. . . . .

Many patentees have incentives to make their patent documents as unclear as possible.

[Wagner Testimony]

Prof. Wasserman:

Indeed, invalid patents are unnecessarily reducing consumer welfare, stunting productive research, and discouraging innovation. . . . Patent Office’s fee schedule should be restructured to minimize the risk that the Patent Office’s revenues will be insufficient to cover its operational costs and to diminish the Agency’s financial incentive to grant more patents when revenues fall short.

[Wasserman Testimony]

Ms. Stanek Rea:

But we do not want to rely exclusively on reviewing the quality of a patent only after it has issued. We also need to focus on front end modifications during examination.

[Stanek Rea Testimony]

Prof Chien:

[Congress should] encourage and expect the USPTO to engage in bold, persistent, and rigorous policy piloting and evaluation.

[Chien testimony]

I went through the STEPP training and thought it was really excellent:

If you are a patent attorney or agent, it helps to think like an examiner. Sunday, November 10, 2019 is the last day to sign up for the January Stakeholder Training on Examination Practice and Procedure (STEPP) agent/attorney course. This three-day course takes place on January 28-30, 2020 at the Miami Beach Regional Library in Miami, Florida.

The training is limited to those who have passed the patent bar, since it will make use of statutes, rules, and guidelines relevant to practicing before the USPTO. Priority will be given to those who have recently passed the patent bar. USPTO trainers lead the course, which is based on material developed for training USPTO employees.

We are applying for CLE credit in Florida for this course.

Use the STEPP sign-up form to register.

You can learn more about the program and upcoming sessions on the STEPP page of the USPTO website.

Guest Post by Emil J. Ali and David E. Boundy.  Emil J. Ali is a partner at Carr Butterfield, LLC, and David Boundy is a partner at Cambridge Technology Law.  More detail about the authors is provided at the end of the post.

On October 9, 2019, the White House issued two executive orders, Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents, (E.O. 13891), reprinted at 84 Fed. Reg. 55235 (Oct. 15, 2019), and Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication (E.O. 13892), reprinted at 84 Fed. Reg. 55239 (Oct. 15, 2019). Both Executive Orders are generally directed to requiring federal agencies to “act transparently and fairly with respect to all affected parties … when engaged in civil administrative enforcement or adjudication.” E.O. 13892 goes on to explain that individuals should not be subject to enforcement actions without “prior public notice of both the enforcing agency’s jurisdiction over particular conduct and the legal standards applicable to that conduct.”

Executive Orders 13891 and 13892—in General

For the most part, Executive Orders 13891 and 13892 are simple reminders and restatements of long-standing requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). For example, E.O. 13891 § 1 and E.O. 13892 § 3 remind agencies that they may not enforce “rules” against the public unless those rules are promulgated as “regulations,” in full compliance with the APA and similar laws. E.O. 13892 § 3 and § 4 remind agencies that the APA allows agencies to use sub-regulatory guidance documents to “articulate the agency’s understanding” of other law, or announce tentative positions, but may not apply those soft-edged understandings as if they were hard-edged enforcement standards, unless the agency has followed certain procedures required by the APA. E.O. 13891 and 13892 each state that agencies have sometimes inappropriately exerted authority, without following statutorily-required procedures.

In addition, Executive Orders 13891 and 13892 go above statute to add a few additional requirements for fairness and transparency.  These above-statutory requirements ask agencies to give notice of all their sub-regulatory guidance documents. Covered guidance documents are defined to include anything to which the agency intends to give prospective effect, that is promulgated without the formality of “regulation” (E.O. 13291 § 2(b)). That class includes the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s Trial Practice Guide, and the Manual of Trademark Examining Procedure, and likely includes decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and OED on which the agency intends to rely for future effect, including ones the USPTO considers “precedential.” (These decisions are excluded from coverage to the extent they decide past issues in specific cases, E.O. 13892 § 2(c)(iv); they’re covered only to the extent an agency relies on them for future effect.) For example, E.O. 13892 requires agencies to “afford regulated parties the safeguards described in this order, above and beyond those that the courts have interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to impose” (emphasis added). E.O. 13892 explains that agencies, like the USPTO, must work to “foster greater private-sector cooperation in enforcement, promote information sharing with the private sector, and establish predictable outcomes for private conduct.”

Among the new requirements added by Executive Orders 13891 and 13892 to promote transparency and predictability are the following:

• Each agency must list all its sub-regulatory guidance documents in one consolidated database of its web site, which must be indexed and searchable. The public should be able to rely on two sources, the Federal Register and one web page, rather than being in a sports bar confronted with twenty screens following twelve simultaneous games. Agencies should avoid relying on guidance documents that pop up without prior notice, or confound the public with fragmented guidance flowing through dozens of web pages, the Official Gazette, the Federal Register, several manuals and guides that are updated without statutorily-required notice, several email lists, web widgets, and the like.
• After the Office of Management and Budget issues further implementing guidance, agencies will have a year to purge guidance documents of invalidly-promulgated requirements. We expect that, by the end of 2020, MPEP §§ 714.14, 802.01, 819, 1207.04, the 2015 rewrite of MPEP § 601.05(a), and Ex parte Quayle, among others, will be reviewed. They must either be repromulgated as regulation with full cost-benefit analysis, or else dropped.
• The orders set additional procedures to promulgate, and provide ongoing periodic review, of various sub-regulatory guidance documents.

The Orders then return to statutory underpinnings, and require agencies to apply them in a consistent and predictable fashion.

“Unfair surprise”

“When an agency takes an administrative enforcement action, engages in adjudication, or otherwise makes a determination that has legal consequence for a person, it may apply only standards of conduct that have been publicly stated in a manner that would not cause unfair surprise.” E.O. 13892 § 4. Anyone that has ever phoned the USPTO and been told that words on a page don’t mean what the words look like they mean will be reassured that that is never supposed to happen again after October 9, 2019.

Moreover, the definitions section of E.O. 12892 highlights the breadth of what it means for an Agency’s position to be an “unfair surprise,” as discussed in Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U.S. 142 (2012). In Christopher, the Supreme Court noted that agencies are required to provide fair warning regarding the conduct that a regulation requires or prohibits and can’t rely on principles of judicial interpretation to save an unfairly-vague rule or give it enforceable “teeth” ex post. See 567 U.S. at 156. E.O. 13892 explains that agencies “must avoid unfair surprise not only when it imposes penalties but also whenever it adjudges past conduct to have violated the law.” E.O. 13892 appears to be a step in the right direction to help inform practitioners (and others) about the practical implications of otherwise innocuous conduct.

When an agency states a position in sub-regulatory guidance, the law has long recognized that the agency may not stand on that guidance as the last word; rather, the agency must entertain alternative positions. “Interpretive rules do not have the force and effect of law and are not accorded that weight in the adjudicatory process.” Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Ass’n., 135 S.Ct. 1199, 1204 (2015). E.O. 13892 § 6 requires the agency to give an aggrieved person an opportunity to be heard to contest an agency guidance position, and give a written decision that articulates a basis for its action.

Example: the Office of Enrollment and Discipline

The Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) may be considered as one example office within the USPTO, which may have to retool to comport its conduct to the new Executive Orders. Simply reading 37 C.F.R. Part 11 and the Final Orders issued by  OED does little to instruct practitioners of the practical standards applied by OED, or implications of practitioners’ conduct. While OED appears to attempt to provide helpful guidance to practitioners into Final Orders, much of this guidance is after the USPTO has already disciplined others, who themselves likely were not aware of the ramifications of their own acts, omissions, or mistakes. While OED may inform individual practitioners that their response to a Request for Information is an opportunity under 5 U.S.C. § 558(c) to demonstrate compliance with the USPTO Rules of Professional Conduct, OED often finds that compliance to be “too little too late,” leaving practitioners subject to discipline.

Of course, many practitioners claim they either never heard of OED because they practice only in trademark law, or they were not properly informed that their conduct, including outside of patent and trademark law, implicated OED’s interpretation of the USPTO Rules of Professional Conduct. Many practitioners, on first hearing of an OED position asserted against them in a Request for Information and Evidence (the typical “first knock at the door” from OED), complain of unfair surprise, because the USPTO does not give practitioners fair advance notice of its standards. That is truly a fair criticism, often not understood by OED.

Case in point—OED’s “publication” of decisions does not comport with legal requirements set by the APA, at least if the agency intends to rely on these past decisions as precedent for future decisions. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(1) and (2) (and now E.O.s 13891 and 13892) require agencies to publish their adjudicatory decisions in the Federal Register, and/or provide useful indexing on their websites (depending on the level of future reliance the agency intends to apply to its own past decisions). Admittedly, OED does publish its decisions on its website and in the Official Gazette, but only those who know where to look can find them, and they aren’t “indexed” as required by law. Truly, it is troubling to see the “enforcement arm” of the USPTO, which has the power to end careers, exercise discretion without careful observance of statutory due process. Furthermore, many such practitioners are caught in the reciprocal discipline web, as we described in an earlier post on Mr. Ali’s blog, which could result in double disbarment by the USPTO.

Implementation for the USPTO

The USPTO faces a scramble to clean up decades of noncompliance with law. With very few exceptions, Executive Orders 13891 and 13892 are simply restatements of principles that have been in effect for decades, under the Administrative Procedure Act (in effect since 1948), Regulatory Flexibility Act (since a large statutory amendment in 1996), Paperwork Reduction Act (1995), Executive Order 12866 (1992), prior Executive Orders 13258 and 13422 (which were in effect until 2009, and significantly overlap with E.O. 13891), and the Bulletin on Agency Good Guidance Practices, 72 Fed. Reg. 3432 (2007). The USPTO has on occasion expressed overt hostility to Presidential authority. For example, in 2011, one of the USPTO’s senior-most officials plainly refused to implement one of these predecessor orders of the President of the United States.[i] Because of these decades of what appears to be noncompliance, what should be a straightforward addition to various pages of the USPTO’s website may require a ground-up rebuild of the USPTO’s compliance/regulatory function, and review of the entirety of the USPTO’s regulatory corpus.

Long-standing statutory requirements that might now be implemented because of the two Orders, and corrective action we may expect from the USPTO, include:

• Agencies must observe requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act (E.O. 13892 § 8(b)) and Regulatory Flexibility Act (E.O. 13892 § 10), two statutes of which the USPTO has been particularly dismissive. For example, the Regulatory Flexibility Act requires agencies to avoid imposing costs on small entities. The USPTO’s analyses have historically only considered the effect on small entity applicants, and ignored to effects on small entity law firms. The USPTO’s Paperwork Reduction Act filings fail to reflect the regulations that define scope of coverage, e.g., 5 C.F.R. § 1320.3(b)(1) and (c)(4)(i). The USPTO should, by new regulation that restates existing law for guidance of USPTO staff, require staff to perform required cost-benefit analyses.
• PTAB decisions, to be “precedential” or otherwise relied on, must be published in the Federal Register. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(1); E.O. 13892 § 3. In winter 2018-19, when one of the Vice Chief APJ’s was answering Q&A questions at a conference, one of the authors, Mr. Boundy asked why the PTAB did not publish its precedential decisions as required by statute. The answer was “Mr. Boundy, aren’t you elevating form over substance?” Mr. Boundy pointed out that the requirement was statutory. Mr. Boundy indicated several similar anecdotes in his brief to the Federal Circuit in Facebook v. Windy City. We have now had nearly a year to see how much weight statutes carry with the PTAB, if a reminder comes from a member of the public. Perhaps a reminder coming from the President will be more effective.
• O. 13891 § 4 requires all agencies to promulgate regulations governing promulgation and amendment of guidance documents. One of the key requirements required by E.O. 13891 is that the agency must inform all its employees that guidance documents do not bind the public. See also E.O. 13892 § 3. That’s always been the law; now the USPTO will be obligated to inform and train its examiners and petitions decision-makers that they are not to cite the MPEP in any manner adverse to applicants. (The USPTO may use guidance to give tentative resolutions of ambiguity, but not to create new obligations or attenuate rights.) One of our recent articles, Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem, laid out the magnitude of the problem.  Another recent article, The PTAB is Not an Article III Court, Part 3, spelled out a good first draft of the necessary regulations.

Practical implementation for the public

Some practical implications for practitioners are immediately clear, as the White House reminds parties of rights they’ve had under statute and regulation for decades. Others will become clearer over time, as the Office of Management and Budget issues implementing guidance, as the USPTO implements the Orders and guidance, and as OED and the rest of the USPTO issue decisions. Practitioners should review forthcoming regulations and notices published in the Federal Register. For example, going back to our case study with OED, the office may propose procedures under this Executive Order, which discusses self-reporting, voluntary information setting, and other actions related to practitioners. Of course, those practitioners currently facing OED proceedings may benefit from this Executive Order by offering an explanation that the public was not properly put on notice of OED’s newfound interpretations of its rules.

We hope to see the USPTO create a dialogue with stakeholders of all shapes and sizes, and institute a new commitment to the rule of law, with predictable compliance with statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders. We’re available to help in any way we can. Director Iancu, you know where to find us.

[i] Then-Acting Associate Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy Robert Bahr, Decision on Petition, 10/113,841 (Jul. 14, 2011) at pages 19-20, refusing to implement the Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices, OMB Bulletin 07-02 (Jan. 18, 2007), reprinted in 72 Fed. Reg. 3432-40 (Jan. 25, 2007). The Bulletin carries the same binding effect against agencies as an executive order.

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Emil J. Ali is a partner at Carr Butterfield, LLC where his practice includes advising and representing intellectual property attorneys in ethics investigations and litigation matters before the Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED), as well as various state bars. Mr. Ali also provides conflicts and compliance advice to various law firms and in-house departments regarding managing effective compliance policies, and transitioning intellectual property professionals.

Mr. Ali is active in several intellectual property and ethics associations, and serves as the Vice-Chair of the ABA-IPL Ethics & Professional Responsibility Committee as well as being part of the Oregon State Bar Unlawful Practice of Law Committee. In addition to being a Registered Patent Attorney, Mr. Ali is admitted to practice in California, the District of Columbia, and Oregon. Emil writes about intellectual property legal ethics and OED procedure at www.oedethicslaw.com/blog.

David Boundy is a partner at Cambridge Technology Law. Mr. Boundy practices at the intersection of patent and administrative law, and consults with other firms on court and administrative agency proceedings, including PTAB trials and appeals. In 2007–09, Mr. Boundy led teams that successfully urged the Office of Management and Budget to withhold approval of the USPTO’s continuations, 5/25 claims, information disclosure statements, and appeal regulations under the Paperwork Reduction Act. In 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asked Mr. Boundy to lead a panel of eminent administrative law academics and the President’s chief regulatory oversight officer in a program at the court’s Judicial Conference on administrative law issues. Judge Plager recommended Mr. Boundy’s article published in ABA Landslide, The PTAB is Not an Article III Court, Part 1: A Primer on Federal Agency Rulemaking, to the patent bar. Another recent article, The PTAB is Not an Article III Court, Part 3: Precedential and Informative Opinions explains the role of sub-regulatory guidance. He may be reached at DBoundy@CambridgeTechLaw.com.

by Dennis Crouch

VirnetX v. Cisco Systems (Fed. Cir. 2019)[Decision]

This one here stems from a set of longstanding inter partes reexamination proceedings that Apple and Cisco filed against VirnetX’s U.S. Patent Nos. 7,418,504 and 7,921,211 (establishing a secure internet connection). The examiner found the claims obvious/anticipated and the PTAB affirmed. (more…)

by Dennis Crouch

Eli Lilly and Company v. Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR, SCT Docket No. 18-1515 (Supreme Court 2019)

Lilly’s new petition for writ of certiorari asks an easy question:

Whether a single-step patent claim that describes its point of novelty solely in functional terms violates the rule against functional claiming set forth in Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. v. Walker, 329 U.S. 1 (1946).

The question as posed is easy to answer.  Any patent claim that describes its point of novelty solely in functional terms is invalid violates the rule set forth in Halliburton.  Of course, Halliburton was abrogated by the 1952 Patent Act with the adoption of what is now known as 35 U.S.C. 112(f):

Element in Claim for a Combination. — An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.

Note here that the 1952 patent act only discussed the treatment of functionally claimed elements in “a claim for a combination.”  The real question here is whether Halliburton is still good law for “single-step patent claims.”  I’m betting the Supreme Court would say yes — A claim with a single element would be invalid if that element was claimed solely in functional terms.

= = = = =

The petition reads a bit like a mystery novel.

A few months [after Lilly obtained FDA approval to market tadalfil for BPH treatment], respondent—a shadowy non-practicing entity based in Germany—filed the patent application that ultimately became the patent at issue here,
claiming priority to an application from 1997.

Here, UroPep’s patent covers a one step method of treatment/prophylaxis claim for BPH.  The one step is as follows:

administering to a person in need thereof an effective amount of an inhibitor of phosphodiesterase (PDE) V [excluding eight particular compounds].

Back in 1997, PDE V inhibitors where already known, and tadalafil in particular was known to be a PDE V inhibitor.  The 1997 priority document mentions ten different PDE V compounds, but does not mention tadalafil, and the claim excludes eight of those ten.

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Lilly’s question presented includes an important and disputed presumption — that the claim “describes its point of novelty solely in functional terms.”  In its decision, the district court held that the claimed step of administering a PDE V inhibitor was not wholly functional.

Even if means-plus-function analysis would apply to a product claim to “an inhibitor of PDE V,” it does not apply to a method claim reciting a method of administering that substance to a patient.

District Court Decision. The jury then awarded $20 million in damages. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion (R.36) — setting up this current petition.

[Petition][Appendix]

To be clear, the district court analysis here asks whether this fits under 112(6), not whether it comports with Halliburton.  That case states that a claim which “describes [its] most crucial element … in terms of what it will do, rather than in terms of its own physical characteristics … is invalid as a violation of Rev.Stat. § 4888 [indefiniteness].”  In General Elec. Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp., 304 U.S. 364 (1938), the court similarly wrote invalidated claims where the inventor “uses conveniently functional language at the exact point of novelty.”

There are several ways that these cases could be applied here.  Example: (A) Since PDE V inhibitors were already known, their existence was not the point of novelty.  Rather, the point of novelty is administering those known drugs in order to treat a particular condition — and that “administering” portion of the claim was not described functionally. (B) Another way of thinking here is that the novelty of the claim is administering a particular drug — but we don’t know the details of that particular drug is because it is described functionally.

Sony Corp. v. Iancu (Fed. Cir. 2019)

Sony’s patent no. 6,097,676 is directed toward multiplex audio recordings with each channel having a different language translation.  Back in 2015, SONY sued ARRIS for infringing the ‘676 patent. (One of several infringement lawsuits between the companies).  In 2016, ARRIS turned-around and filed for inter-partes-review (IPR). The PTAB instituted as to two claims (5 and 8) and found them unpatentable (obvious).  That final written decision was issued in September 2017. ARRIS and SONY subsequently settled their ongoing litigation and in November 2017.  At that point SONY appealed and the USPTO intervened to defend the PTAB decision.  The patent had also already expired (August 2017).

On appeal, the majority and dissent argued over standing — whether there was any ongoing case-or-controversy since the patent expired in 2017 and the parties settled. Judge Newman – The Great Dissenter – argued that the court lacked jurisdiction:

There is no interest, neither private interest nor public interest, in the fate of this patent. There appears to be no consequence of either our appellate decision today or the potential PTAB decision on the remand now ordered by the court.

The majority opinion authored by Judge Dyk and joined by Chief Judge Prost held otherwise:

It is well-established that our decision (and the Board’s decision on remand) would have a consequence on any infringement that occurred during the life of the ’676 patent.

I agree with the majority here. The patentee has a right to defend its patent against cancellation by the USPTO even after expiration — and up to the six-year timeline for back-damages.

Setting procedure aside. On the merits, the majority agreed with the patentee Sony – that the PTAB had erred in claim construction.  Here, this is a case where means-plus-function language helped the patentee with a narrow claim construction.

The patent here appears to be fairly broadly drafted — claiming an “information reproducing device” that is able to play “a plurality of voice data, each voice
data having similar contents translated into different languages are multiplexedly recorded as audio data of plural channels.”  The device has a “default code” for which language to play.

The argument on appeal involved the term “reproducing means for reproducing the audio data of the channel designated by the default value stored in the storing means.”  As a means-plus-function term, the element was interpreted on appeal under 112(f):

(f) Element in Claim for a Combination.— An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.

Here, although you might imagine that the “reproduction means” is some piece of hardware, the patent only describes it in software form.  The result is that the best interpretation of the claim term also limits it to software form — since means plus function limitations are construed only “to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.”  The prior art described the claimed means in hardware form rather than software. On remand, the PTAB will need to determine whether the claims remain obvious in light of that narrowed claim construction.

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Important quote from the case:

We are not bound by the parties’ arguments as to claim construction. See Exxon Chem. Patents, Inc. v. Lubrizol Corp., 64 F.3d 1553, 1555–58 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (“[T]he [court] has an independent obligation to determine the meaning of the claims, notwithstanding the views asserted by the adversary parties.”).