What is the Steady-State Patent Allowance Rate?

Patent

PatentGrantRate

by Dennis Crouch

This post continues from two prior data-posts:

Adding-in data from the USPTO Chief Economist (Alan Marco), I have updated my chart of the USPTO utility patent grant rate. The chart shows my verson of patent grant rate calculated as the number of patents issued (allowed) divided by the number of disposed-of-applications where the disposed-of-applications includes serialized utility applications either (1) abandoned or (2) issued as patents (allowed) during the given period and does not give any consideration to RCE filing.

In the chart above, you’ll find in allowance rate that I calculated using the USPTO Chief Economist disposal data that stretches back to 1985.  Overlaid in blue is my data previously presented.  You’ll notice substantial similarity between the data sets during the period of overlap, but some differences.  You’ll note that – on average – the rate calculated from my data is greater than that calculated from USPTO data.  Although I cannot entirely exclude a counting error, I expect that the differences can be explained primarily by the fact that the USPTO data includes all utility applications while my figures are limited to published applications.  Others have shown that non-published applications tend to have a lower allowance rate (these are, for the most part, applicants that have chosen not to file globally and tend to include a higher proportion of software and business method inventions).   In addition, I believe that the USPTO counts the patenting as of the allowance date rather than the issue date, which is why I put “allowed” in parenthesis above.  A further explanation for the differences that my data relies upon only a sample of around 30,000 published applications rather than the entire population.

In my estimation, the chart fails to reveal any ‘natural’ or steady-state allowance rate. It is also difficult to correlate the allowance rate with particular changes in the law or court decisions.  Rather, best guess is that the primary impact on the overall allowance rate stems from USPTO Policy as set by its Director.

There’s No Such Thing as a Content Based Unconstitutional Condition

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I asked my former student Zachary Kasnetz to write this post on his forthcoming article explaining the Federal Circuit’s errors in its en banc Tam decision. A draft version of his article is available online: ssrn.com/abstract=2864016. – DC

By Zachary Kasnetz

I would like to thank Professor Crouch for this opportunity to share my views on the Federal Circuit’s decision in In re Tam, 808 F.3d 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (en banc), in advance of the Missouri Law Review’s publication of my article.  This post discusses some of the arguments I make as to why the court erred in holding Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act facially unconstitutional.

Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act prohibits registration of any mark that “may disparage . . . persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt or disrepute.”  15 U.S.C. 1052(a).  It has long been controversial and commentators have largely  agreed that it is unconstitutional.  See In re Tam, 808 F.3d at 1334 n.4 (citing commentary).  Tam held: (1) Section 2(a) was a content-based and view-point based restriction on speech; (2) it regulated the expressive, not commercial aspects of Tam’s mark; (3) it actually regulated speech; (4) registration was not a subsidy or government speech; and (4) could not pass strict or intermediate scrutiny.  The holding and reasoning are flawed regarding the numbers 1, 2, and 4.[1]

First, the Court reasoned backwards.  First, the court should have decided whether Section 2(a) actually regulated speech at all and then whether it was a government speech or a subsidy.  If the answer to that question was no, then whether Section 2(a) was content and viewpoint-based and whether it impacted the commercial or expressive aspects of Tam’s mark would have been irrelevant.  Government speech and subsidies are not “exempt” from First Amendment scrutiny as the majority claims: they don’t implicate the First Amendment at all because they do not abridge any speech.  See Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 193 (1991); Pleasant Grove v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 467 (2008).

Second, Section 2(a) only impacts the commercial aspects of Tam’s speech because a trademark is “a form of commercial speech and nothing more.”  In re Tam, 808 F.3d at 1376 (Reyna, J., dissenting) (quoting Friedman v. Rogers, 440 U.S. 1 (1979)).  All benefits of registration are commercial in nature, i.e., they make it easier to enforce the mark.  Registration has no impact on Tam’s ability to express any ideas or messages.  Cf. Author’s League of Am. v. Oman, 790 F.2d 220, 223 (2d Cir. 1986).  As Judge Reyna dryly pointed, the majority held that “Mr. Tam’s speech, which disparages those of Asian descent, is valuable political speech that the government may not regulate except to ban its use in commerce by everyone but Mr. Tam.”  Id. at 1378.  There is no First Amendment right to government assistance in preventing others from expressing ideas or views.  Cf. Davenport v. Wash. Educ. Ass’n, 551 U.S. 177, 188-90 (2008).

Therefore, the only basis for the majority’s opinion is the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, under which the government may not condition an important benefit on the surrender of an important constitutional right, even if it could withhold the benefit entirely.  The doctrine is notoriously incoherent and inconsistent in its application.  Tam’s basic holding is that Section 2(a) is an unconstitutional condition because it is a content and viewpoint based regulation/restriction/burden on speech.  But there’s no such thing as a content-based unconstitutional condition.

A condition’s constitutional permissibility turns on the relationship between the condition and the government program at issue.  See, e.g., USAID v. Alliance for Open Soc’y Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2321, 2329 (2013).  The more “germane”, i.e., reasonably related to the goals of program, a condition is, the more likely it is to be constitutional.  See Sullivan, Unconstitutional Conditions, 102 Harv. L. Rev. 1413, 1420-21 (1989).  Any condition on a government benefit or participation in a government program implicating the First Amendment necessarily draws content-based distinctions: the question is whether that distinction is reasonably related to the program’s goals.  According to the majority, the goals of federal trademark law are (1) protecting the rights of mark holders and (2) preventing consumer deception and confusion.  If we accept that this is correct, the constitutionality of Section 2(a) turns on its relation to those goals.  The majority believes it is “completely untethered” those purposes.  In re Tam, 808 F.3d at 1354.  I disagree.

Trademarks allow consumers to quickly identify the source and quality of goods or services.  Therefore, trademark law conditions registration on a mark meeting certain requirements, including that it not be disparaging.  Certain kinds of marks are better at this than others, lying across the spectrum of distinctiveness from arbitrary or fanciful to generic.  Given the massive amount of information bombarding consumers, I argue that marks communicating other information or messages are less effective.  The government has an interest in ensuring that “the stream of commercial information flows cleanly as well as freely.”  Va. Bd. of Pharmacy v. Va. Citizen’s Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 758, 771–72 (1976)).  Disparaging marks, by definition, communicate more than the source and quality the good or service they attach to.  By denying the benefits of federal registration, Section 2(a) mildly incentivizes the selection of more effective marks.  Thus, it is reasonably related to trademark law’s goals.  Moreover, it only likely affects the choice of marks: it is not trying to “leverage [a government benefit] to regulate speech outside of the program itself.”  USAID v. Alliance for Open Soc’y Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct. at 2329 (2013).

Trademark law draws many distinctions between different marks based on their content.  As a far as I know, the constitutionality of the ban on registering trademarks containing “the flag or coat of arms of the United States, or of any State or municipality, or of any foreign nation,” 15 U.S.C. § 1052(b), has never been questioned.  Nor has the ban on those containing “a name, portrait, or signature identifying a particular living individual . . , or the name, signature, or portrait of a deceased President of the United States during the life of his widow, . .”  Id. at § 1052(c).  The government has never been required to show that such marks would actually be confusing or insufficiently distinctive despite the fact that this provision obviously singles out a category of potential trademarks based solely on their content.

Does Section 2(a) Actually Impact Speech?

I am also extremely skeptical that denying registration to disparaging marks actually has a chilling effect on speech.  The majority fears that Section 2(a) chills potential selection of disparaging marks, but the real issue isn’t whether trademark choice is being affected, but whether “ideas or viewpoints” will be suppressed.  Simon & Schuster v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 116 (1991).  But trademarks are “commercial speech and nothing more.”  Friedman v. Rogers, 447 U.S. at 562.  Consider Tam.  If he had known that there was a real possibility that he would have been unable to register THE SLANTS because it was disparaging he would have chosen not to create his music or would not have made music intended to express pride in his Asian heritage?  I doubt it and I have not seen any evidence to support such a claim.  Perhaps he would have chosen a different name for his band, but again I’m skeptical.  Thus, Section 2(a) is “exceedingly unlikely” to suppress or chill expression of any ideas and viewpoints.  See Lyng v. Int’l Union, UAW, 485 U.S. 360, 365 (1988).

= = = = =

The author is an Associate at Growe Eisen Karlen Eilerts in St. Louis.  He earned his J.D. from the University of Missouri in May 2016 and his B.A. from the University of Maryland in 2012.

[1] Assuming arguendo, that I am wrong about numbers 1, 2, and 4, I agree that Section 2(a) could not pass strict or intermediate scrutiny.  I also agree that placement on the register does not turn Tam’s purportedly disparaging message into government speech.

USPTO Allowance Rate

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For the chart below, I collected a randomized sample of outcomes from 30,000 utility patent applications published 2001-2016.  For each application, I identified the ‘disposal date’ – with the disposal date being either (1) the date that the resulting patent issued or (2) the date that the patent application was deemed abandoned.  Still pending applications (even those subject to an RCE) were not given a disposal date.

For the chart below, I grouped disposals by quarter and then calculated the percent issued as patents compared with the percent abandoned.  You’ll note the drop in allowance rate in 2008-2009 under Jon Dudas with the rapid rise in allowance rate once David Kappos took-over as director.  Although less dramatic, allowance rate continued to rise under Michelle Lee.  Of course, the allowance rate depends upon both the USPTO approach to prosecution as well as that of the applicant.

DisposalsPerQuarter

There are many different ways to calculate USPTO “allowance rate” and this is only one.  The PTO typically considers the filing of an RCE to be a disposal. That approach makes the allowance rate appear substantially lower.  Others look at an entire patent family — making the allowance rate appear substantially higher.

 

SCA Hygiene Laches Oral Arguments: How Do we Interpret Congressional Silence?

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Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in SCA Hygiene v. First Quality with the following question presented:

Whether and to what extent the defense of laches may bar a claim for patent infringement brought within the Patent Act’s six-year statutory limitations period, 35 U.S.C. § 286.

Sitting in the background is the Supreme Court’s parallel copyright decision in Petrella v. MGM (2014) holding that the doctrine of laches cannot bar a claim for legal damages brought within the three-year statutory limitations of copyright law. In its opinion, the Federal Circuit distinguished Petrella – finding that in this situation patents should be treated differently than copyrights.

Martin Black (Dechert) argued for petitioner-patentee SCA Hygiene and suggested that Petrella paves the way: “There is nothing in the Patent Act which compels the creation of a unique patent law rule, and if the Court were to create an exception here, that would invite litigation in the lower courts over a wide range of Federal statutes.”

According to Black, the focus should be on the statute – and the statute does not provide for laches. Further, section 286 is entitled “Time Limitation on Damages” — that is the section that should be applied when determining whether a patentee unduly delayed its enforcement.

Mr. Black: Laches has never been applied in the face of the Federal statute of limitations. The Court looked at that issue exhaustively in Petrella and could not find Respondents one single example.

Petrella was decided 6-3 and with Justice Scalia’s death the result would be 5-3.  Justice Breyer dissented then and indicated in oral argument “Just to repeat, I’m still dissenting.”

Mr. Waxman, representing the accused infringer in this case (who won on laches) began by highlighting the background of the 1952 Patent Act — “This Court has repeatedly recognized that the 1952 Patent Act sought to retain and reflect patent law as it then existed.”  And, at that time (1952), laches was thought to be an available defense.

Mr. Waxman: The question  in this case is what Congress understood the patent law doctrine was in 1952. And we think that there is a literal mountain of cases. Every single case that was decided in any court at any level from 1897 when the six-year damages cap was put into place until today, with the exception of one district court decision in Massachusetts which demonstrably misapplied the two authorities that it cited, every single case has recognized that — that laches was a defense in an appropriate case to claims for damages. And no case has ever said or suggested to the contrary.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That mountain of cases were in equity, right? . . .  that’s where your mountain becomes a mole hill, right? . . .

Mr. Waxman: But the point I’m trying to make — and if I make no other point, please let me not be misunderstood here — Congress in 1952 simply continued in haec verba the statute that had existed on the books since it was put in on the equity side in 1897. And there were — whether it is a mountain, a mole hill, or a mesa, all of the — okay. Never mind. I’ll just stick with mountain or mole hill. All of the — I mean, I — I don’t think — I hope I live long enough to have another case where I can come to Court and say, all of the case law that decide — that examine this question, all of which was adjudicating the applicability of laches to claims of damages alongside the six-year damages limitation provision, all of them recognize that laches existed comfortably alongside that provision. And there is nothing really anomalous about that.

 

The difference then, according to Waxman, between patents and copyright is not really found in the statutory text itself but instead emanates from the history and congressional sense at the times of enactment.  For patents, the background law allowed laches and congress intended to implement that background law in 1952.

Mr. Black disagreed with the state-of-the-law:

So it was in front of Congress in 1952 with three things. This Court’s precedent that said that  laches could not be used to bar legal relief. You had the merger of law and equity in 1938 which scrambled all the eggs. You had the 1946 Lanham Act, which also went through the committee on patents and copyrights where they specifically included the word “laches” in the statute. And you had the abolition of the remedy that parties had been seeking as the primary means of monetary relief in patent law for 60 years. There is no way that you can look at that, that fact, and get around it by pointing to a book, a treatise, which, by the way, does not have a section in it on unenforceability.

A practical problem with eliminating laches is the lying-in-wait scenario — do we allow a patentee to simply wait for years until the defendant is locked-in and then sue? Mr. Black argued that Congress offered a solution — concerned third parties can file a declaratory judgment action or else a petition for inter partes review.   Black also argued that the lying-in-wait scenerio doesn’t happen in practice because the patent term ends too soon (unlike in copyright law).  The discussion also entered into patent trolls and the FTC recent report.  Mr. Black argued that “The companies that get hurt by [Laches] are operating companies who don’t like to sue and therefore wait until they have to [while] patent trolls . . . have to sue to monetize.”

Pending Patent Applications

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PendingStatus

For this study, I collected PAIR data from a sample of about 10,000 published utility patent applications that were filed 2007-2016. (not considering priority claims). For each of those applications, I simply categorized whether the application was (1) patented; (2) abandoned; or (3) still pending.  The chart above shows the results grouped by quarterly filing date.  Looking at applications filed in 2014q4 (~ two years ago) 26% are patented, 6% abandoned, and 68% still pending. By the time applications application have been pending for four years only about 15% remain pending.

There are few abandoned applications during the first 2 1/2 years of pendency – it seems that most applicants wait at least for a final rejection before giving up.  An application pending for 4+ years is likely to involve substantial after-final practice (RCEs, appeals, etc.) that substantially slows down final resolution.

 

Patentlyo Bits and Bytes by Anthony McCain

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Get a Job doing Patent Law                  

Copyright on a Useful Item

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Screen-Shot-2016-05-02-at-2.27.31-PM[1]Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the pending copyright case of Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands.  Although not a patent case, the issue involves the boundary line (if any) between patent and copyright and the “useful article” exception. Question Presented: What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act.  The statutory test under Section 101 states that “the design of a useful article . . . shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.”

Clothing has traditionally been seen as useful and therefore not itself subject to copyright protection.  Here, the subject matter is the design of a cheerleader outfit (see image at right).

Petitioner (Mr. Bursch) began with a provocative statement that probably says more about copyright law than the case itself: “Mr. Bursch: Congress did not intend to grant a century-long copyright monopoly in cheerleader uniform design.”

I expect that the court’s consideration of this case will also have some impact on its views regarding the coverage of design patents in Apple v. Samsung.

 

Read the transcript

 

Construing Claims as of their Effective Filing Date

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A short aside from Dennis Crouch

In Phillips v. AWH, the en banc Federal Circuit included an oddball statement regarding PHOSITA perspective in claim construction.  The court wrote that the focus is on the meaning to PHOSITA “at the time of the invention, i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application.”  I call the statement odd because it incorrectly states that the time-of-the-invention is the same as the patent application’s effective-filing-date. The difference can be critical — although word-meaning changes slowly over time, recent invention is an important trigger for rapid definitional change.

Regardless of whether the Phillips statement is correct, going forward for Post-AIA patents, the court should now eliminate “the time of the invention” from its claim construction process.  Under the statute, all of the focus now is on the effective filing date with invention shifted to a mere historic element of the patenting process.

Stepping Back: One problem with any time-of-the-invention analysis is that the traditional legal definition of invention involves a potentially wide temporal expansion.  Remember, invention begins with conception but is not completed until the invention is reduced to practice.  The patent courts added further to this by finding the filing of a patent application to be a constructive reduction to practice that completes the invention process. Because most patent applications are filed prior to a complete reduction to practice, for most patented inventions the time of invention completion is the same as the effective filing date of the patent at issue.

 

In re Aqua: Ambiguity in the Statute Means Deference to the PTO

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In re Aqua (Fed. Cir. 2016)

In its newly filed brief in this pending en banc case, the USPTO sets forth the three statutory provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 316 that are related to amendment practice in an Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings: §§ 316(a)(9); (d)(1); and (e). [Aqua Products–PTO brief.] Taking them out of order: Section (d) allows for one motion to amend; Section (a)(9) gives the PTO broad regulatory authority to set the standards and procedures associated with the motion to amend; and finally Section (e) indicates that petitioner has the burden of proving unpatentability. The friction between these sections may not be inherent to the statute, but arose when the PTO created the rule that the patentee must prove patentability of any amended claim before the motion will be allowed. The patentee argues in Aqua that the PTO approach is contrary to § 316(e) while the PTO argues that its approach is allowed by the broad rule-making-authority granted by § 316(a)(9).

316(a) Regulations. —The Director shall prescribe regulations— (9) setting forth standards and procedures for allowing the patent owner to move to amend the patent under subsection (d).

316(d) Amendment of the Patent.— (1) In general.—During an [IPR], the patent owner may file 1 motion to amend the patent in 1 or more of the following ways:(A) Cancel any challenged patent claim; (B) For each challenged claim, propose a reasonable number of substitute claims.

316(e) Evidentiary Standards.— In an inter partes review instituted under this chapter, the petitioner shall have the burden of proving a proposition of unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence.

In its brief, the PTO explains that assigning burdens associated with the motion to amend is a “standard” expressly falling within its rulemaking authority and thus must be granted deference by the Federal Circuit on appeal. That portion of the argument appears clearly correct. The difficulty for the PTO comes into play in distinguishing Section 316(e) — its best and first argument is that the provision does not expressly discuss amendments: “For one thing, § 316(e) never mentions amended claims.” The PTO goes on to argue that 316(e)’s implicit focus is on burden’s associated with claims-at-issue and not proposed claims. “§ 316(e) speaks only to the petitioner’s burden of proving the unpatentability of existing claims; it does not specify who has the burden of proving the patentability of new, never-before-examined substitute claims.”

The brief also takes the interesting tack of walking through the amici filings and pointing out that none of them fully agree on the meaning of the supposedly unambiguous Section 316(e).  If the section is seen as ambiguous, then the PTO’s deference level kicks-in once again.

Any amicus brief supporting the USPTO petition will be due by November 2, 2016 with oral arguments set before the entire court on December 9, 2016.

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More Reading:

 

Remarks by Director Michelle K. Lee at the 2016 AIPLA Luncheon

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USPTO Director Michelle Lee offered a set of Remarks at the October 28, 2016 AIPLA Luncheon.  As a presidential appointee, Director Lee is likely nearing the end of her term as USPTO Director.  Although the likely election of fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton suggests a smooth transition that could extend her term beyond January 2017, I expect that she will step-down prior to that point and that Deputy Director Russ Slifer will step-up as Acting Director.

The following are a few snippets from her speech:

Thank you, Denise, for the introduction.  And, good afternoon, everyone.  It’s a real pleasure to be here with you today. I always look forward to the AIPLA annual meeting. In fact, it is the third time I’ve had the honor to speak at this conference. I’m reminded of the first time I spoke at AIPLA, the mid-winter conference in Phoenix, AZ in January 2014. It was literally just a few weeks after I had moved from California to Washington and became acting head of the USPTO. At that conference you all welcomed me to my new role and we began our work together to strengthen and protect the intellectual property system that we know is so critical to our country’s continued economic success.

Almost three years have passed since that meeting, and I find myself honored and humbled every single day to serve in this role and to be a part of an amazing team at the USPTO. I feel it every time I’m at an international conference, seated behind a flag of the United States on the table in front of me, reflecting on how I’m a child of immigrant parents representing the United States of America.  And I feel it today, standing before you, reflecting on just how far the USPTO has come during this Administration.

Today, I’d like to share with you my views of the state of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and how this situates us to meet our future challenges. Back in January 2009, when our President was first sworn into office, the USPTO’s patent application backlog and pendency numbers were at all-time highs. Today, both our backlog and pendencies are now lower than they’ve been in more than a decade, and they continue to go down. That is hardly the only success story. But it’s emblematic of how much the USPTO has charged forward the last eight years, and how strongly it is positioned to face future challenges. This has been a team effort, with incredible work done by my predecessors, Congressional cooperation, the incredibly dedicated and talented staff at the USPTO, and all of you.

Together, we have put the Agency in a spot where we are ready to build on our successes. Today, we are financially more secure thanks to the America Invents Act, a milestone of this Administration, which gave us, among other things, fee setting authority. Additionally, we are more customer-service oriented and more responsive to stakeholder input than ever before. We’ve constantly welcomed—in fact solicited—feedback and input, and are willing to refine and improve where needed. We’ve had more RFC’s, Proposed Rules, and roundtables than ever before–and thank you for your input and patience responding to each. Whether you gave feedback on our EPQI, our 101 guidance, our PTAB implementation and refinements, and/or our transparency of patent ownership proposal, your input has been valuable.

We’ve also brought a broader range of services to support American innovators where and when needed, including: Through four regional offices across the country and over a dozen IP attaches across the globe. And, we’ve worked to provide you with more access to examiner interviews by training and promoting their benefits internally at the USPTO and externally, leading to an increase of 232% more interviewing hours in just eight years.

Finally, and importantly, the USPTO’s relationships with all of its partners is healthier and stronger than ever before–that’s with our users, our employees, our unions, Congress, and within the Administration. I want to take a brief moment on this topic, because I really do believe it is key to the Agency’s success – past and future. Thinking back to even just 10 years ago [under Jon Dudas], the relationship with our users was nowhere near as collaborative, transparent, or productive as it is today. The Agency often didn’t seek much public input on examiner guidance or implementation rules, and interviews weren’t encouraged as they are today. Together, we have changed that dynamic.

Second, we’ve strengthened our working relationship with our employees. All told, we have enjoyed some of the highest rankings in the Partnership for Public Service’s list of Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. And we all know, an engaged workforce produces better work product and services for all of you. Over the last eight years, our attrition rate has reduced significantly to the point where we compete favorably with some top companies in the private sector. Also, we’ve developed a productive relationship with our unions, allowing us to make better and faster improvements in important areas such as our production count system, patent quality, and our telework program.

We have also maintained a healthy working relationship with Congress on both policy proposals and operational issues. From the passage of AIA, to the Defend Trade Secrets Act, to technical assistance on various legislative proposals, we have engaged with our colleagues on the Hill in impactful ways and the USPTO’s voice is a respected one.

Finally, the USPTO is effectively fulfilling its role as principal advisor to the President and Administration on IP policy. I’ve been pleased with the confidence the President and the Secretary of Commerce have shown my team and I, allowing us to pursue policies and programs in the best interest of our innovators. All of this: the greater financial security, the increased customer service orientation and responsiveness, and  the better relationships with all of our stakeholders, has enabled us to make real progress on our priorities, and positions us for even greater success going forward.

There is strong evidence of this in a number of important areas, including patent backlog and pendencies, quality and policy. During this Administration, we have: Reduced the backlog of unexamined patent applications by ~30%, despite an average ~4% year-over-year increase in filings. Reduced our first action pendency by ~38% to 16.2 months, and reduced total pendency by ~25% to 25.3 months. This is due to numerous actions taken by the USPTO leadership team and my predecessors, and the hard work of our examining corps, and we will continue to do more.

Armed with greater finances and a shrinking backlog, we embarked on an unprecedented effort to enhance the quality of patents – a core goal of the Agency. There is a cost to society when the USPTO issues a patent that we should not issue, just as there is a cost to society when we don’t issue a patent that should issue. And just as there is a cost to society when there is a patent in the system that properly issued, but that may no longer be valid due to changes in the case law. Recognizing this, we have enhanced the quality of patents in our system, both before they leave our office through our Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (led by a new Deputy Commissioner and a newly created department within the Patents organization solely focused on this effort); and after the patents return to the office through our PTAB and other post grant review proceedings (which double check the Office’s work and allow reconsideration in light of evolving case law or newly discovered prior art).

Addressing the second prong first, the new PTAB proceedings have significantly changed the patent landscape. With over 5,000 PTAB petitions now filed, we have one of the busiest dockets in the country. These proceedings are meeting our Congressional mandate of providing a faster, more cost efficient quality check on the patents in the system. With extensive input from all of you, we have worked hard to implement and conduct these proceedings as fairly and efficiently as possible. That’s why I asked my team to engage the public in a series of listening tours that led to a set of “quick fixes” in 2015 and then more substantive revised rules last April. That’s also why we took it upon ourselves to assess the frequency of motions to amend and the reasons for their grants or denial.  We’re applying your input to identify where we can do better. These PTAB proceedings have proven themselves a valuable check on patent quality, particularly in the later part of a patent’s lifecycle.

At this point, it makes sense to bring greater resources to bear if there are questions about a patent’s validity. The economics are different at the beginning of a patent’s lifecycle. The value of a patent is often not fully known at time of filing (perhaps due to the nascency of the technology, industry and/or market), and the time and resources afforded during examination are typically limited. Innovation isn’t served if the USPTO strives to issue very expensive, “bullet-proof” patents after many years of examination. Extensive time and expense would mean that innovators would file too few patent applications, given finite budgets. The purpose of the patent system—to incentivize disclosures to advance the progress of science and the useful arts—would be defeated because too few disclosures would be made. If over time the industry and the market determine that a piece of patented technology is valuable and the public believes it is not valid under current law or newly discovered art, then there is an economic incentive to expend greater resources to test the validity of the patent. And a panel of technically trained judges steeped in patent law is well-suited to perform this double-check quickly and efficiently.  In short, to best incentivize innovation. The USPTO needs to issue IP rights that are as certain, reliable and affordable as they can reasonably be, and offer post-grant proceedings that quickly, accurately and cost-effectively test the validity of certain patents proven to be of economic importance if questions of validity arise.

With all of that said, it is essential that these post-grant proceedings are properly calibrated so that they provide a quality check but do not bar deserving patentees from enforcing their patent rights. It’s why some protections in the AIA are so important, such as restrictions on timing of challenges, thresholds petitioners must meet for institution, and strict estoppel provisions. It’s also why the Agency is committed to revising our rules as many times as needed so these proceedings are as fair and effective as possible within our Congressional mandate. It’s why it is critical, within this framework, the USPTO issue the very best quality patents possible. Patents that are issued correctly in accordance with the law, that are clear providing notice to the public of the patent’s boundaries, and that are issued consistently across the Patent Examination Corps. And, it’s why I launched the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative in 2015, so patent owners can have greater confidence and certainty of their rights in this new environment. Today, we’ve got about a dozen initiatives underway that, we believe, will meaningfully move the needle on enhancing patent quality. This includes making sure we’re getting the most relevant prior art before our examiners as early as possible by: leveraging technology, making prior art cited in our PTAB proceedings available to the examiner handling a related pending child application, and transitioning our entire patent examination corps from the decades old, antiquated U.S. Patent Classification System to the updated, increasingly global Cooperative Patent Classification System. It also includes drilling down on best practices (such as clarity of the record) during examination coupled with targeted training. Developing new and better ways to measure our progress, like our Master Review Form and new Quality Metrics. And, providing a new after-final procedure that offers applicants the opportunity to make a presentation before a panel and receive a detailed write-up of the panel’s decision that  might resolve an issue without going to appeal, or even result in the application being allowed.

So, this is what we’re doing at a high level. But I’d like to share more specifics about one of our flagship programs—our “Clarity of the Record Initiative”–and some of the great progress we have been making on our Clarity of the Record pilot program. The goal of this program is to develop best practices on how much detail to include in certain key parts of the prosecution record, for example: Interview summaries, or reasons for allowance, or construction of 112(f) limitations. Regarding interview summaries: How many times have you reviewed a file history, noted the patent rejected and then seen the patent allowed after an examiner interview with minimal or no changes to the claims and little or no explanation for the allowance? In this pilot, we worked to provide more detailed summaries including the substance of the examiner’s position, details of any agreement reached, and a description of next steps following the interview. After the pilot concluded, we measured 22 data points focused on clarity, and found an average of 15% improvement in clarity between the pilot examiners and a control group.

On reasons for allowance: How many times have you reviewed a prosecution history, and there is nothing in the record to indicate why the claims were allowed by the examiner? Because it is at the discretion of the individual examiner to set forth reasons for allowance, those reasons have not always been included in every Notice of Allowance. As part of this pilot, participants were trained on setting forth reasons for allowance in every Notice of Allowance. At the conclusion of the pilot, we found a 25% improvement in the clarity of reasons for allowance between the pilot examiners and a control group. Through the pilot, we also found the following practices significantly improved overall clarity addressing each independent claim separately, particularly identifying the applicant’s persuasive arguments (wherever they may be in the record), and identifying the specific allowable subject matter of the claim rather than merely reciting the entire claim as the basis for allowance. This pilot also helped us review the best practices around claim interpretation.

On claim interpretation:  How many times have you seen a prosecution record where there was clearly an issue about how a claim was interpreted, but the record was devoid of any explanation of the claim’s interpretation? In the pilot, the examiners were given training on explicitly setting forth key claim interpretations to minimize ambiguities. For example: Explaining all Section 112(f) presumptions and whether the presumptions were overcome, identifying on the record the structure in the specification that performs the function, and when a prior art reference is used to reject multiple claims, clearly addressing specific limitations in each claim that provide the basis for the rejection.

With our trainings on interview summaries, reasons for allowance and claim interpretations, we saw a statistically significant improvement in clarity when examiners used these best practices. Perhaps the most telling indicator of progress from this pilot is that when these pilot examiners were examining applications not included in the pilot program, they continued to apply the pilot’s best practices. This is a strong indication of the success of our training. Also, the clarity of the record initiative furthers the goal of compact prosecution by encouraging the applicant to rebut the examiner’s on-the-record position promptly and directly if there is disagreement. In short, we are already taking steps to clarify the record and you will see our examiners doing so increasingly over time.

Of course, patent quality also means applying the law accurately and clearly even in areas of the law that are evolving. Including, for example, the 101 jurisprudence on what is patent eligible subject matter. As many of you know, we’ve spent a fair amount of effort on this in recent years. Following major court rulings, we’ve revised our examination guidance, with input from all of you, multiple times and trained our examiners on the new guidance. Based upon input from our stakeholders, we also introduced training focused on clear drafting of 101 rejections and subsequent responses. And, we just announced in a Federal Register Notice two roundtables focused exclusively on the topic of patent eligible subject matter. At the first roundtable, we will discuss potential updates to our examination guidance, and at the second roundtable, we will discuss the impact of the current 101 jurisprudence on innovation, what changes might be considered to further support innovation, and whether such changes are best achieved legislatively, judicially or administratively. We thought it would be helpful to begin the public discussion, to create a record of where there is agreement or disagreement and what, if any, need for improvement. We welcome your participation on this important and complex issue.

As I hope you can see from this quick run-down of our initiatives, we are very excited about EPQI! It is an ambitious effort that is yielding results now and will yield many more in the long run. To learn more about our EPQI progress to date, please join us— mark your calendars—on December 13, at the USPTO, where we will spend a good part of the day sharing details of the results of each of the dozen or so EPQI.  We think you will like what you hear.

Turning now to some of our policy and other accomplishments over the course of this Administration, thanks to the AIA, we can now engage more directly with innovators—through our regional patent offices in Detroit, Denver, Silicon Valley, and Dallas. As you know, I started my tenure in public service as the Director of the Silicon Valley Regional Office. Having had the opportunity to help define the vision of these Offices, and stand up three of the four regional offices, I am very proud of this legacy to our IP system that will endure for generations to come. I’ve always said that, one day when my daughter is old enough, I can point to the Silicon Valley Regional Office in our hometown and say, “Your mom had a hand in opening that office.” And I’d feel very proud about my contribution to our community and society for that. Through these offices, we powerfully expand our ability to educate regional innovators about intellectual property and help small and large businesses and inventors directly access a wider range of services offered by the USPTO.

Additionally, one of the great privileges serving as head of the America’s Innovation Agency is that it is my job to increase opportunities and awareness about STEM, invention and intellectual property and, to me, this means across all geographic regions of this great country of ours and across all demographics. For example, when fewer than 15% of U.S. based inventors listed on a patent are women, it’s clear that we are leaving valuable inventive talent behind. This is something we cannot afford, especially as our companies cannot hire the technical talent they need, and  they are asking Congress to change our immigration laws to provide more flexibility in our visa and immigration system to ensure we can hire the best talent here in the U.S. We have the power to change this. We’ve called this our “All in STEM” campaign—and, true to the complex nature of the problem—it’s a multifaceted approach, including increasing awareness of the issue;

Getting girls interested in science, invention and IP early through efforts like our Girl Scout IP Patch and retaining and supporting women in STEM fields by mentoring, training and simply highlighting the female success stories through social media and inventors baseball trading cards for distribution to our school-aged children, so all our kids can see themselves as inventors! It’s not just a social imperative, it’s an economic imperative as we look compete in an increasingly global and competitive environment. 

And, it is no less an economic imperative to ensure that intellectual property beyond patents is properly calibrated to support creativity and entrepreneurship. We’ve advocated for significant modernizations of copyright law, beginning with our Green and White Papers on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy, where we made in the White Paper legislative recommendations on reforms to statutory damages for copyrights. We completed two historic copyright treaties and sent ratification packages to Congress—One on facilitating access to published works by the visually impaired, and another to expand copyrights for actors in audiovisual works.

On Trademarks, we’ve taken steps to improve the efficiency of our operations by adopting policies to encourage electronic filings of trademark applications which permitted fee reductions; and introducing the first major overhaul of rules at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board since 2007, and I was pleased to recently join the President in the Oval Office when he signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which created a new federal civil cause of action for trade secrets This provided much needed, additional protections to innovators of today, in an environment where confidential business information can be quickly transported or emailed over state—or international—lines. While modern trade secret protection is essential, we are mindful that inventors need to be able to have the choice to instead disclose their invention in exchange for the exclusivity guaranteed by a patent—through reliable patent protection here and abroad.

As many of you know, there’s an entire department at the USPTO devoted to this very mission, complemented by IP attachés stationed in about a dozen countries across the globe. With this team, I have frequently represented the USPTO abroad, helping to ensure that a strong and equitable IP system does not stop at our nation’s borders.  One such trip—to China in 2015—stands out in my mind, both because of the importance of promoting strong IP rights in the second largest economy in the world, and because I experienced, on a personal level, the depth of opportunity offered by our country. As I articulated our positions on these critical IP policy issues with the Vice Premier in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, the central headquarters for the Chinese government, I thought for a moment of my parents back home in the Bay Area. When they bravely left their homeland in China to move to the United States to build a new life, did they ever imagine their daughter would one day be in such a meeting, in such a role? They understood America is the land for those willing to work hard and embrace its values.

I’ve had the honor and privilege of having many great opportunities over the last three years while leading the USPTO, and, I’ve capitalized on those opportunities for the benefit of innovators because, each and every day, I’ve been able to count on an amazing team of public servants at the USPTO working hard to best serve all of you. I firmly believe that the United States Patent and Trademark Office is healthy, well-functioning and poised to successfully handle whatever challenges and opportunities lie ahead.

Our issues are important, complex and nuanced. And while not everyone will always agree with all that the Agency does, we are well prepared to work together and with all of you to accomplish our top priorities and successfully address the challenges ahead. So, thank you for all your help. And thank you for all I know you will continue to do to ensure that our greatest inventions are yet to come.

Although Functionally Claimed, Court Imports Structural Limitations from Specification

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by Dennis Crouch – Note, the prevailing party here (Merck & Co.) is represented in this case by MBHB Partner Dan Boehnen. MBHB is a major sponsor of Patently-O.

ProFoot v. Merck & Co. (Fed. Cir. 2016)

This case offers a straightforward narrowing claim construction analysis involving the ProFoot’s patented method of fitting shoe inserts.  U.S. Patent No. 6,845,568.  The decision also lays traps for prosecutors hoping for implicitly broad claims. 

After a narrowing claim construction, the plaintiff stipulated that Merck’s Dr. Scholl’s process did not infringe and the case was dismissed.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed in a nonprecedential opinion.

The claim construction process looks to provide additional meaning and context to the expressly stated claims.  The approach is to look for how a personal of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the application filing date would have interpreted the claim language.  In this process, Phillips v. AWH indicates that the primary sources for interpretation are the intrinsic documents: the patent document (the single best guide) and the prosecution history (a helpful additional resource).  When appealed, the Federal Circuit reviews claim construction determinations de novo while giving deference to underlying factual findings.

Here, the claimed insert-fitting method include use of a “neutralizer” that is used to place a customer’s ankle in a “neutral position.”  Following the Markman process, the district court construed the “neutralizer” according to how it was described in the specification — requiring a housing, protractor, and angular-adjustable foot plate.  On appeal, ProFoot argued that the district court improperly imported elements of the specification to limit the claims and that the claimed neutralizer does not require those specific components.  Rather, according to ProFoot, a neutralizer should be defined based upon its functional ability rather than any particular physical elements.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected ProFoot’s broad-construction argument — holding that “when read in the context of the [asserted] patent, this term requires a device that includes these components.”  To reach this conclusion the court started with claim language that require a user to step on the neutralizer (claim 1 requires “place right foot on a neutralizer”) and to use the neutralizer to measure an angle.  Looking to the specification, the court found that the patentee had described “only two embodiments of the neutralizer” – and both embodiments required all of the components found in the claim construction in ways that are consistent with the requirements of the claims.

Although the appellate panel found that evidence from the specification was sufficient to support the district court ruling, it also noted that the prosecution history of the parent application offered additional support. The prosecution history story goes as follows: the claimed neutralizer was not found in the originally filed claim set but was added during prosecution with an express claim requirement that the neutralizer include the physical elements (housing, protractor, etc.). Although the physical components are not included in the child application, the court noted that the patentee never  indicated that it intended the child-patent neutralizer to be any different from the parent-patent neutralizer.  ProFoot made the claim-differentiation argument here – the child application does not include the express limitations that are included in the parent and therefore should be seen as broader.  The court rejected that argument as not providing any further information as to what the inventor understood “neutralizer” to include.  I the inventor had thought the word should be interpreted differently in the two cases “he could have said so explicitly or revised the [asserted] patent to include other, broader embodiments of the neutralizer.”

One question that I have here involves the court’s use of prosecution history as providing “evidence of the inventor’s understanding of neutralizer.”  The court has previously held that inventor’s understanding of claim meaning is not directly relevant to claim construction.  Rather, the focus is on the objective meaning understood by someone of ordinary skill in the art.

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ProFoot’s Claim 1.

A method of fitting an individual with right and left foot inserts which place the ankles of the individual in a neutral position comprising the steps of:

for creating a right foot insert, having the individual place the right foot on a neutralizer while elevating the left foot off of the neutralizer;

using the neutralizer to determine the angle necessary to place the right ankle in a neutral position;

providing an insert having an angle which represents the neutral state for the right ankle;

for creating a left foot insert, having the individual place the left foot on a neutralizer while elevating the right foot off of the neutralizer;

using the neutralizer to determine the angle necessary to place the left ankle in a neutral position; and

providing an insert having an angle which represents the neutral state for the left ankle.

November Patent Quality Forum Series

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The USPTO continues to move forward with its Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI) and is hosting a set of five Quality Forum events over the next month in DC, Milwaukee, KC, Baton Rouge, and Portland. [Link]  See you soon!

Particular initiatives being discussed include:

  • Post-Prosecution Pilot: This ongoing pilot is part of the PTO’s continued search for compact-prosecution mechanisms.  After final rejection, the patentee offers a 5-page argument and then participates in a 20-minute conference with a panel of three examiners who then offer a written opinion.
  • Post Grant Outcomes Pilot: This pilot is now being implemented office wide and basically makes sure that AIA Trial Proceedings (including applicant arguments and submitted prior art) are given to examiners handling pending related applications.
  • Stakeholder Training on Examination Practice and Procedure: The training program is for non-examiners on patent office practice. Looks awesome – and would be exceptionally helpful for someone studying for the bar exam.
  • Clarity of the Record Pilot: Looking primarily for clear claim construction statements and also clear information provided in interview summaries

 

In re Aqua: Amending Claims Post Grant in an IPR

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The only pending en banc patent case before the Federal Circuit is In re Aqua Products (Appeal No. 15-1177) involving claim amendments during inter partes review.  The Patent Statute contemplates claim amendments as a possibility but not a right — notably, 35 U.S.C. 316(d) states that “the patent owner may file 1 motion to amend the patent” with additional motions to amend permitted in limited situations.  The scope of amendment is also limited to (A) cancelling challenged claims and (B) proposing “a reasonable number of substitute claims” that do not “enlarge the scope of the claims of the patent or introduce new matter.”

In its implementation regulations, the USPTO interpreted the right to a motion as something much less than a right to amend and required, inter alia, that the patentee provide evidence that any proposed substitute claims be patentable over the known prior art. See Idle Free Sys., Inc. v. Bergstrom, Inc., IPR2012–00027, 2013 WL 5947697 (PTAB June 11, 2013).

 

The short panel opinion in Aqua the Federal Circuit reaffirmed the USPTO’s tightly restrictive approach – following its own prior holdings. See, for example, Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyconn, Inc., 789 F.3d 1292, 1307−08 (Fed. Cir. 2015).

The underlying case involves a self-propelled robotic swimming pool cleaner that uses an internal pump both as a vacuum cleaner and as the propulsion system.   U.S. Patent No. 8,273,183.  After the IPR was initiated, Aqua moved to amend three of the claims to include the limitations found in the claims that had not been challenged. In particular, the patentee asked to substitute claims 1, 8, and 20 with claims 22-24 respectively.  The new claims included a set of new limitations, including a propulsion “vector limitation” that required a jet stream configured to create a downward vector force rear of the front wheels.  This appeared to be a reasonable request that would move the case toward conclusion, and the PTAB agreed that these new claims satisfied the formal requirements of Section 316(d).   However, the PTAB refused to allow the amendment – holding that the patentee had failed to show that the amended claims were sufficiently beyond the prior art.

In rejecting the amendment motion, the PTAB did not conduct a fully obviousness analysis, but instead focused on the new elements and considered whether the patentee had shown those elements to render the claim valid over the prior art.  Defending that approach on appeal, the Agency has defiantly argued that its rules regarding amendments and its application of those rules are both reasonable and entitled to substantial deference from the Court of Appeals.

Thus, the pending en banc questions focus on this stance:

1) In an IPR, when the patent owner moves to amend claims under 35 U.S.C. § 316(d), may the USPTO require the patent owner to bear the burden of persuasion, or a burden of production, regarding patentability of the amended claims?

2) When the petitioner in an IPR does not challenge the patentability of proposed amended claims or the Board finds the challenge inadequate, may the Board raise a patentability challenge on its own, and if so, where would the burdens lie?

Although prior Federal Circuit cases have supported the PTAB approach, the September 2016 decision in Veritas Tech v. Veeam Software (Fed. Cir. 2016) reversed that trend.  In that case, the court held that the PTAB had acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by denying the patentee’s motion to amend its challenged claims after failing to discuss each added feature separately.

The top-side briefs have been filed in the case with Amicus support for petitioner:

  • [AquaRehearingBriefPatentee]
  • [AquaRehearingBriefPhRMA] [AquaRehearingBriefCWRU] [AquaRehearingBriefAmiciTop]
  • IPO (Section 316(e) applies here and places the burden of proving a proposition of unpatentability onto the petitioner, not the patentee.)
  • AIPLA (The current amendment practice “does not provide patent owners with the fair and meaningful opportunity to amend claims that Congress envisioned”.)
  • PhRMA (Amendments are very important to patentees)
  • BIO (PTO may not impose any burden of proving patentability in an IPR process. Rather, the focus is on unpatentability – and that burden is upon the petitioner.)
  • Case Western Law Clinic (Although the PTO has rulemaking authority in this area, it exceeds that authority by ceding authority to the administrative patent judges.)
  • Houston IP Law Ass’n (The very small number of successful motions to amend reveals a problem.)

The PTO Brief along with any amicus in support are due over the next two weeks.

 

Maria Pallante Out as Chief of Copyright Office: New Calls for Unified US Intellectual Property Office

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In some interesting news – On Friday Oct 21st, Maria Pallante was apparently removed today from her post as Register of Copyright within the Library of Congress and Karyn Temple Claggett moved up as Acting Register.  According to reports, newly installed Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden ordered the change that involved Pallante being locked-out of her computer Friday morning.

An oddity – the US Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress and thus under direct administration of Congress rather than the President (and Congress is not very good at running administrative agencies).  Under the current structure, the Register position is quite weak.  That said, Congress has recently relied upon the Copyright Office to make increasingly important market determinations.  However, the structure means that the President and Executive Agencies cannot rely upon the US Copyright Office for advice about copyright law or rely upon the agency to shape its policy.

In a 2012 post, I suggested creation of a United States Intellectual Property Organization (USIPO) akin to the UK IPO, Canadian IPO, and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).  The structure would essentially be an expansion of the USPTO under presidential control although obviously still required to follow law set by Congress.  In 2012 I wrote that:

From a theoretical standpoint, it is unclear whether the [current] fractured administrative structure leads to rights that are either too strong or too weak.  What we can tell is that the [current] structure leads to a lack of coordination in administration of the various IP systems within the US.

A big problem with the fractured administration is that many operating businesses relying upon intellectual property (IP) rights typically do not focus on a single form of IP rights but instead take a layered approach that includes some combination of patent, trademark, copyright, contractual, employment, trade secret, and design rights, for instance. Each form of protection has weak points and overlapping coverage provides a greater level of certainty.  That overlapping nature also creates difficulties for users that hope to rely upon the public domain and fair use.  The overlapping approach suggests the need for a more unified administration approach to help ensure that IP rights serve their policy goals.

In her role as Register of Copyrights, Pallante had advocated transforming the Copyright Office into an executive agency.  It is unclear, however, whether those statements relate to her recent removal.

 

Medtronic: On Rehearing the Court Restates that IPR Termination Decision is Not Appealable

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by Dennis Crouch

On rehearing in Medtronic v. Robert Bosch, the Federal Circuit panel has reaffirmed its earlier determining that the PTAB’s vacatur of an IPR institution decision is a decision as to “whether to institute an inter partes review” and therefore is “final and nonappealable.”  The original Medtronic decision had been released prior to Cuozzo v. Lee (2016) and the rehearing decision now explains that “nothing in Cuozzo is to the contrary.”

Although I continue to cringe at the prospect of no appeal, the decision here makes logical sense based upon the statutory and procedural structure. Here, the termination decision was based upon the petitioner’s failure to identify all real parties at interest — a core requirement of a complete petition.  Base upon that failure, the Board determined that the petitions were incomplete and therefore “cannot be considered.”  With that conclusion, the Board terminated the petitions and vacated the prior institution decisions.   In this framework, it makes sense for the termination/vacatur to be a decision on institution and thus not subject to appeal.  I could imagine a different scenario where the PTAB terminates an IPR based upon some other ground that is not a petition requirement — such as failure to prosecute or improper post-institution attorney conduct. In that hypothetical situation, the termination would be substantially divorced from the institution and – in my view – would no longer fall under the no-appeal requirement.

An additional difficulty with all of this stems from the pending Ethicon petition and the difference between action by the Director and action by the PTAB.  The statute separates the roles – indicating that the PTO Director’s role is in determining “whether to institute” an IPR.  Under the statute, the PTAB then steps in to conduct the trial.  Those separate roles were then combined by PTO regulation which states “The Board institutes the trial on behalf of the Director.” 37 CFR 42.4.   A question – unanswered in this case – is whether the Director’s regulatory delegation above should be interpreted to also extend to vacating and terminating petitions.  I’m not sure that it does. 

TC Heartland Law Professor Amicus Brief

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In TC Heartland, the accused infringer has asked the Supreme Court to reset the law of venue and give effect to the statutory statement that infringement actions be brought either (1) “in the judicial district where the defendant resides” or (2)” where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.”  28 U.S.C. § 1400(b).   In its 1957 Fourco decision, the Supreme Court affirmatively answered this question.  However, Fourco has been undermined by subsequent Federal Circuit decisions.  Thus, the question presented again is the same as what was originally asked in Fourco: “Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) is the sole and exclusive provision governing venue in patent infringement actions and is not to be supplemented by 28 U.S.C. § 1391(c).”

From a policy perspective, the case is seen as a vehicle for defendants who do not like being sued in the Eastern District of Texas and into more venues perceived as more defendant friendly.

A group of 50+ law and economics professors led by Mark Lemley, Colleen Chien, Brian Love, and Arti Rai have filed an important brief in support of the TC Heartland petition that I have copied below.  Their position is (1) the Federal Circuit has erred on interpreting the law; and (2) the permissive venue result has fueled many of the problems of our patent system.

= = = = =

INTEREST OF AMICI[1]

Amici are 53 professors and researchers of law and economics at universities throughout the United States. We have no personal interest in the outcome of this case, but a professional interest in seeing patent law develop in a way that encourages innovation and creativity as efficiently as possible.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) provides that a defendant in a patent case may be sued where the defendant is incorporated or has a regular and established place of business and has infringed the patent. This Court made clear in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 223 (1957), that those were the only permissible venues for a patent case.  But the Federal Circuit has rejected Fourco and the plain meaning of § 1400(b), instead permitting a patent plaintiff to file suit against a defendant anywhere there is personal jurisdiction over that defendant.  The result has been rampant forum shopping, particularly by patent trolls. 44% of 2015 patent lawsuits were filed in a single district: the Eastern District of Texas, a forum with plaintiff-friendly rules and practices, and where few of the defendants are incorporated or have established places of business.  And an estimated 86% of 2015 patent cases were filed somewhere other than the jurisdictions specified in the statute. Colleen V. Chien & Michael Risch, Recalibrating Patent Venue, Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-1 (Sept. 1, 2016), Table 3. This Court should grant certiorari to review the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) because the Federal Circuit’s dubious interpretation of the statute plays an outsized and detrimental role, both legally and economically, in the patent system.

ARGUMENT

1. The Federal Circuit’s Expansive and Incorrect Interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) Allows Patentholders to Sue Anywhere in the Nation

Section 48 of the Judiciary Act of 1897 limited jurisdiction in patent cases to districts that the defendant inhabited or had a place of business and committed infringing acts. Act of March 3, 1897, c. 395, 29 Stat. 695. In 1942, this Court confirmed that “Congress did not intend the Act of 1897 to dovetail with the general provisions relating to the venue of civil suits, but rather that it alone should control venue in patent infringement proceedings.” Stonite Prods. Co. v. Melvin Lloyd Co., 315 U.S. 561, 563 (1942).

In 1948, Congress enacted 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), specifying that “patent venue is proper in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” In 1957, this Court confirmed that patent venue should not be interpreted with reference to the general jurisdiction statute, holding that “28 U.S.C. 1400(b) . . . is the sole and exclusive provision controlling venue in patent infringement actions, and that it is not to be supplemented by the provisions of 28 U.S.C. 1391(c).” Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 223 (1957).

In 1990, the Federal Circuit declined to apply this Court’s longstanding precedent and decided that the general venue statute should define interpretation of the patent venue statute.  It made this decision on the basis of a ministerial change Congress made in 1988 to 28 U.S.C. § 1391. VE Holding Corp. v. Johnson Gas Appliance Co., 917 F.2d 1574, 1583 (Fed. Cir. 1990). That statutory language changed the wording in 28 U.S.C. § 1391, from defining residence “for venue purposes” to defining residence “for purposes of venue under this chapter.” There was no indication that Congress intended this change to impact the patent venue statute.

The Federal Circuit’s conclusion that Congress’s ministerial change overruled this Court’s longstanding precedent is incorrect for at least two reasons.  First, it violates fundamental rules of statutory construction.  It is well-established that Congress “does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions—it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001) (citing MCI Telecomm. Corp. v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 512 U.S. 218, 231 (1994); FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 159-60 (2000)).

Second, the Federal Circuit’s interpretation renders the second half of § 1400(b) largely superfluous.  That section provides:

Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.

The term “resides” in § 1400(b) must mean something different than having “a regular and established place of business.” Otherwise, there would have been no reason to include both provisions in the venue statute, or to link them through the disjunctive term “or.”  In Brunette, this Court, interpreting 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) as well as 28 U.S.C. § 1391(d), confirmed that where a corporation “resides” is where it is incorporated. Brunette Mach. Works v. Kockum Indus., 406 U.S. 706, n.2 (1972).

Instead of parsing § 1400(b) carefully, the Federal Circuit has chosen to read the § 1391(c)(2) definition of corporate residence for general venue purposes into the specific patent venue provision.  In relevant part, § 1391(c)(2) provides that corporate defendants:

shall be deemed to reside . . . in any judicial district in which such defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to the civil action in question . . . .

For patent infringement cases, the relevant aspect of personal jurisdiction is typically specific jurisdiction, which focuses on whether the defendant’s suit-related conduct establishes a “substantial connection” with the judicial forum in question.  Walden v. Fiore, 134 S.Ct. 1115, 1121 (2014).  But a corporation will have established a suit-related “substantial connection” with, and thus be subject to jurisdiction in, any district in which it “has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” So the Federal Circuit’s decision to read the § 1391(c) definition of “resid[ing]” into § 1400(b) renders the second half of the latter section superfluous as to corporations, a category which includes virtually all patent defendants.  A judicial reading that renders half of a statutory provision superfluous is strongly disfavored.  United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation, 131 S.Ct. 2313, 2330 (2011) (“‘As our cases have noted in the past, we are hesitant to adopt an interpretation of a congressional enactment which renders superfluous another portion of that same law.’” (quoting Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Serv., Inc., 486 U.S. 825, 837 (1988))); Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, 515 U.S. 687, 698 (1995) (noting “[a] reluctance to treat statutory terms as surplusage”).

The Federal Circuit’s expansive, and we believe incorrect, interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) effectively allows patent owners to file suit in any federal district where an allegedly infringing product is sold.  In re TC Heartland, LLC, No. 2016-105, at 10 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 29, 2016) (holding that jurisdiction is proper in a patent suit “where a nonresident defendant purposefully shipped accused products into the forum through an established distribution channel and the cause of action for patent infringement was alleged to arise out of those activities”).  The widespread availability of products over the internet means, in effect, that patentholders can bring their suits in any district in any state in the country.

2. Permissive Venue has Fueled and Enabled Forum Shopping and Selling, Patent Trolls, and Case Concentration

The Federal Circuit’s expansive interpretation of 28 U.S.C. §1400(b) has harmed the patent system in three distinct ways. It has led to forum selling and forum shopping, it has contributed to the growth of opportunistic patent litigation by patent trolls, and it has led to undue case concentration.

Patent lawyers today spend a great deal of time figuring out the best districts in which to file patent cases, and for good reason. The district in which you file your patent case has consequences for how much your case will cost, how long it will last, and whether you will prevail in court. Mark A. Lemley, Where to File Your Patent Case, 38 AIPLA Q.J. 401 (2010); Brian J. Love & James C. Yoon, Predictably Expensive: A Critical Look at Patent Litigation in the Eastern District of Texas, Stan. Tech. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming, 2016).

The choice of venue enabled by the Federal Circuit’s liberal interpretation of the statute has created an incentive for courts to differentiate themselves in order to compete for litigants and “sell” their forum to prospective plaintiffs. See J. Jonas Anderson, Court Competition for Patent Cases, 163 U. Pa. L. Rev. 631 (2015); Daniel M. Klerman & Greg Reilly, Forum Selling, 89 S. Cal. L. Rev. 241 (2016).

Among district courts, the Eastern District of Texas is the clear forum of choice for patent plaintiffs. It has been the most popular venue for patent cases in eight of the last ten years. Chien & Risch, supra at 3.  Whether intentionally or not, judges in the Eastern District of Texas have adopted rules and practices relating to case assignment, joinder, discovery, transfer, and summary judgment that attract patent plaintiffs to their district. Klerman & Reilly, supra; Matthew Sag, IP Litigation in U.S. District Courts: 1994-2014, 101 Iowa L. Rev. 1065 (2016) (detailing evidence of “forum selling” and five advantages to plaintiffs of filing suit in the Eastern District of Texas).

A study of all patent cases filed from 2014 to June 2016 quantifies some of the advantages. Love & Yoon, supra.  Compared to their colleagues across the nation, judges in the Eastern District of Texas take 150 additional days on average to rule on motions to transfer, id. at 15, and are 10 percentage points less likely to stay the case in favor of an expert adjudication on the validity of the patent by Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in inter partes review, id. at 26., despite the fact that patents asserted in the Eastern District of Texas are challenged in inter partes review more often than patents asserted in any other district. Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Arti Rai, & Jay Kesan, Strategic Decision Making in Dual PTAB and District Court Proceedings, 31 Berkeley Tech. Law J. 45, 109 (2016).  At the same time, judges in the Eastern District of Texas have adopted discovery rules that begin earlier, end sooner, and require broader disclosure than just about anywhere else in the country. Love and Yoon, supra at 19-22 (comparing discovery and other pretrial deadlines applicable in the Eastern District of Texas and District of Delaware).  In combination, relatively early and broad discovery requirements and relatively late rulings on motions to transfer ensure that defendants sued in the Eastern District of Texas will be forced to incur large discovery costs, regardless of the case’s connection to the venue.

However, not all types of plaintiffs choose to take advantage of the leverage that these rules and procedures make possible.  Patent assertion entities (PAEs), or patent “trolls” use patents primarily to gain licensing fees rather than to commercialize or transfer technology. Colleen V. Chien, From Arms Race to Marketplace: The Complex Patent Ecosystem and Its Implications for the Patent System, 62 Hastings L.J. 297 (2010) Trolls make particular use of the advantages provided by the Federal Circuit’s permissive approach to forum shopping. Since 2014, over 90 percent of patent suits brought in the Eastern District of Texas were filed by trolls established for the purpose of litigating patent suits.  Love & Yoon, supra at 9. By contrast, operating companies, individuals, and universities are more likely to sue in other districts.  Chien & Risch, supra at 3-4, 40.

The troll business model explains this difference in behavior. As the FTC’s recent report describes, “litigation PAEs” sign licenses that are “less than the lower bounds of early stage litigation costs,” a finding “consistent with nuisance litigation, in which defendant companies decide to settle based on the cost of litigation rather than the likelihood of their infringement.” Federal Trade Commission, Patent Assertion Entity Activity: An FTC Study, https://www.ftc.gov/reports/patent-assertion-entity-activity-ftc-study.   Rather than a decision on the merits and damages commensurate with the value of patented technology, litigation PAEs instead seek to leverage the high cost of litigation to coerce nuisance-value settlements keyed not to the merits of the lawsuit, but the cost of litigation.  Mark A. Lemley & A. Douglas Melamed, Missing the Forest for the Trolls, 113 Colum. L. Rev. 2117 (2013). Further, unlike operating companies that sell products, litigation PAEs generally lack customers and regular operations and therefore have the flexibility to incorporate and file suit based solely on litigation considerations, through shell companies or otherwise.

While forum shopping in general impairs the operation of law, disadvantages those who lack the resources to engage in forum shopping, and creates economic waste, Jeanne C. Fromer, Patentography, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1444, 1464-1465 (2010), the rise of the troll business model exacerbates these problems in patent litigation, creating a particularly urgent need for the Court to hear this case. This Court has previously warned against the problems of abusive patent litigation.  More than a century ago, it worried about the rise of “a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts.”  Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192, 200 (1883).  And in Commil v. Cisco, this Court said:

The Court is well aware that an “industry has developed in which firms use patents not as a basis for producing and selling goods but, instead, primarily for obtaining licensing fees.” eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L. L. C., 547 U. S. 388, 396 (2006) (KENNEDY, J., concurring). Some companies may use patents as a sword to go after defendants for money, even when their claims are frivolous.

576  U.S. __, 135 S.Ct. 1920 (2015).

Because troll suits now dominate patent litigation nationwide, their filing patterns have led to an overall concentration of 44% of all patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas in 2015. Among cases initiated 2014 through 2016, one U.S. District Judge on the Eastern District of Texas—Judge Rodney Gilstrap of Marshall, Texas—was assigned almost one quarter of all patent case filings nationwide, more than the total number of patent cases assigned to all federal judges in California, New York, and Florida combined.[2]

This level of concentration is a problem for the legal system whatever one thinks of the decisions of the Eastern District of Texas and regardless of how fair and capable the judges there are. Simply from a logistical standpoint, the current caseload in the Eastern District of Texas is problematic.  If even 10 percent of the 1,686 patent cases assigned to Judge Gilstrap in 2015 go to trial, he will need to preside over three to four patent trials per week every week for an entire year to avoid creating a backlog.

Further, when Congress decided to consolidate patent appeals in the newly-created United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, it deliberately chose to include both appeals from the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the district courts, so the new court would not hear only appeals from patent owners.  And it considered and rejected proposals to create a specialized district court to hear patent cases.  But the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of § 1400(b) has in practice created just such a court.

The current distribution of patent litigation filings is the result of strategic behavior by a specific type of patent enforcer, not an artifact of proximity to the original locus of invention or alleged infringement. Forum-shopping plaintiffs will naturally gravitate towards whatever district seems to have the most favorable rules. The effect of the Federal Circuit’s decision to expand patent venue beyond the scope of the statute and this Court’s decisions has been to create a de-facto specialized patent trial court, one chosen by litigants on one side rather than by Congress.

CONCLUSION

The Federal Circuit’s permissive venue rule has fundamentally shaped the landscape of patent litigation in ways that harm the patent system, by enabling extensive forum shopping and forum selling, supporting opportunistic patent litigation by patent trolls, and creating undue case concentration.  This Court should grant certiorari in order to curb abuse of venue based on its misinterpretation of § 1400(b).

= = = = =

[1] No person other than the amici and their counsel participated in the writing of this brief or made a financial contribution to the brief. Letters signifying the parties’ consent to the filing of this brief are on file with the Court.

[2] According to Lex Machina, between January 1, 2014 and June 30, 2016 Judge Gilstrap was assigned 3,166 new patent suits, more than the combined total of all district courts in California, Florida, and New York: 2,656. Love & Yoon, supra, at 5 (collecting these statistics).

= = = = =

Signed, Professor John R. Allison (Texas); Professor Margo Bagley (Emory); Professor James Bessen (BU); Professor Jeremy Bock (Memphis); Professor Daniel H. Brean (Akron); Professor Michael A. Carrier (Rutgers); Professor Michael W. Carroll (American); Professor Bernard Chao (Denver); Professor Tun-Jen Chiang (George Mason); Professor Colleen V. Chien (Santa Clara); Professor Andrew Chin (UNC); Professor Robert Cook-Deegan (ASU); Professor Rochelle Dreyfuss (NYU); Dr. Dieter Ernst (Honolulu); Professor Robin C. Feldman (Hastings); Professor Lee Fleming (Berkeley); Professor Brian Frye (Kentucky); Professor William Gallagher (Golden Gate); Professor Shubha Ghosh (Wisconsin); Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara); Professor Bronwyn H. Hall (Berkeley); Professor Yaniv Heled (Georgia State); Professor Christian Helmers (Santa Clara); Professor Joachim Henkel (Technische Universität München); Professor Susan Helper (CWRU); Professor Tim Holbrook (Emory); Professor Herbert Hovenkamp (Iowa); Professor William Hubbard (Baltimore); Dr. Xavier Jaravel (Stanford); Professor Dennis S. Karjala (ASU); Professor Peter Lee (UC Davis); Professor Mark A. Lemley (Stanford); Professor David K. Levine (WashU); Professor David S. Levine (Elon); Professor Doug Lichtman (UCLA); Professor Yvette Joy Liebesman (SLU); Professor Orly Lobel (USD); Professor Brian Love (Santa Clara); Professor Phil Malone (Stanford); Professor Michael J. Meurer (BU); Dr. Shawn Miller (Stanford); Professor Matthew Mitchell (Toronto); Professor Susan Barbieri Montgomery (Northeastern); Professor Sean Pager (Michigan State); Professor Arti K. Rai (Duke); Professor Jacob H. Rooksby (Duquesne); Professor Jorge R. Roig (Charleston); Professor Matthew Sag (Loyola Chicago); Professor Pamela Samuelson (Berkeley); Ana Santos Rutschman (DePaul); Professor Lea Bishop Shaver (Indiana); Professor John L. Turner (Georgia); Professor Jennifer Urban (Berkeley); Professor Eric von Hippel (MIT).

One Last Try: Is the Inter Partes Review system Unconstitutional?

Patent, , ,

Cooper v. Square is the final pending constitutional challenge to the inter partes and post grant review proceedings created by Congress in the America Invents Act of 2011 and briefing in the case is now complete.

In the final reply brief in the petition process, Cooper explains how this case is a good vehicle for the challenge:

This case is the only one left of three that raised a facial constitutional challenge to inter partes review (IPR). This Court relisted in Cooper v. Lee, No. 15-955, and MCM Portfolio v. HP, No. 15-1330, before denying cert on October 11, 2016. This case is distinct from both of those, and far more amenable to adjudication by this Court. This case does not have the vehicle problem identified by the federal respondent in Cooper v. Lee (since this case arises directly from an agency final decision, whereas Cooper v. Lee arose from a collateral proceeding). And this case does not seek the extreme constitutional remedies of the petitioner in MCM Portfolio (since this case seeks relief in the form of making IPR outcomes advisory, not in the form of annihilating an entire section of a federal agency).

In its responsive brief Square argued that Cooper waived his constitutional argument by not repeatedly raising the issue.  The Cooper brief does a nice job of explaining the errors in that conclusion.

Patent Academic Ray Mercado also took advantage of the request for a responsive brief to file an amicus brief. Mercado argues that patents should be seen as “private rights” and therefore cannot be administratively cancelled.  He writes: “Once the historical uniqueness of patent law is taken into account, it is clear that patents are ‘private rights’ for purposes of this Court’s separation of powers jurisprudence, and their validity must be decided by Article III courts.”

Dissenting on Obviousness

Patent,

In re Efthymiopoulos (Fed. Cir. 2016)

In a split opinion, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the PTAB’s determination of obviousness.  Biota’s patent claims influenza treatment through oral inhalation of zanamivir while the prior art teaches the identical treatment by nasal inhalation.   A second prior art reference also suggests that similar compound can be taken via “inhalation” (without the nasal or oral modifier).  On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed that the general inhalation disclosure “is reasonably understood to disclose inhalation by either the nose alone, mouth alone, or both.”

Judge Newman writes in dissent:

The PTAB and now this court rule that it was obvious to administer this drug by oral inhalation, although there is no reference, no prior art, no suggestion, proposing that this mode of application might succeed, or that it should be tried. There was evidence of skepticism even as oral inhalation was evaluated. There was no contrary evidence. The evidence on which the Board and now this court rely is the evidence in the patent application itself, describing oral inhalation, its benefits, and its effectiveness. Upon learning this information from this inventor’s disclosure, the Board found that it was obvious, and my colleagues agree that it is obvious to them.

 

 

In its brief, the PTO wrote:

Efthymiopoulos seeks to capture as his exclusive property right a particular (but not particularly new) way of delivering an old compound to treat a well-known disease. Specifically, Efthymiopoulos claims a method for treating influenza, an infectious disease of the respiratory tract caused by influenza (flu) viruses, by administering zanamivir, a compound known in the prior art as an inhibitor of influenza virus production, by inhalation of zanamivir through the mouth alone. Efthymiopoulos contends that his contribution to the art is the route of inhalation – treating influenza solely by oral inhalation.
But the evidence of record shows that oral inhalation would have been obvious. Specifically, as of the effective filing date, skilled artisans understood inhalation to mean oral, nasal, or both. The prior art was replete with available oral inhaler devices for use with well-known micronized dry powder formulations. Skilled artisans also knew that oral inhalation delivers more drug to the lungs and that nasal inhalation delivers more drug to the nasal cavity. Skilled artisans further knew that some strains of influenza infect the lungs, and that young children are more susceptible to lung infections.

The case here is an example of the difficulty with the flexible obviousness analysis — it allows for well supported arguments on both sides.

Bad Patents and the False Claims Act

Patent

by Dennis Crouch

An interesting False Claims Act case has recently been unsealed. USA ex rel. Lower Drug Prices for Consumers (LDPFC) v. Allergan and Forest Labs., Case No. 16-cv-09 (E.D.Tex. 2016) (SEALED USA Complaint).

The False Claims Act provides special incentives for whistleblowers to uncover fraud against the U.S. Government.  The Act authorizes the whistleblower to file a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the Government and then receive a cut of any recovered damages. See 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733.  The whistleblower here LDPFC appears to be a branch of the hedge fund Foxhill Capital.

This case involves Allergan/Forrest Labs U.S. Patent No. 6,545,040 that is listed in the FDA Orange Book as covering the drug Bystolic.  The basic false claims argument is that the market price of Bystolic is high because of the patent coverage – but the patent is (allegedly) invalid.  If true, this means that Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospitals are all paying more than they should for the drug.  As stated by the complaint: “The current market price for Nebivolol (Bystolic) is a false price because the ‘040 patent is invalid.”

Although the legal theory makes sense, the facts may get in the way: Is the patent invalid (PTAB says its close, but no) and, if it is invalid – did the patentee have knowledge of the invalidity?