Tag Archives: IPR

Chisum on IPR Initiation

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Chisum-MuellerIn an email distribution regarding their upcoming Chisum Patent Academy, Don Chisum and Janice Mueller opine on the upcoming Supreme Court case of SAS v. Lee.

They write:

The Court will address, at least indirectly, the PTO’s rule 37 CFR § 42.108(a). The rule allows the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to institute inter partes review (IPR) on (and, implicitly, to adjudicate) only some of the claims of a patent challenged in a petition (and, also, only on some of multiple grounds of unpatentability). . . .

More likely than not, the Supreme Court will invalidate the practice that rule 108(a) makes possible as contrary to the governing statutes. 35 USC Section 318(a) requires that the PTAB “issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner.” If the PTAB must rule on all claims challenged in a petition in its final decision, it makes no sense to allow the PTAB (per Rule 108(a)) to “institute” review on fewer than all those claims. (NOTE: the statute on institution, 35 USC 314(a), sets a reasonable-likelihood-of-unpatentability “threshold” for “at least 1 of the claims challenged in the petition.” That can easily be read as contemplating that only one of the challenged claims must meet the threshold and that all challenged claims will be carried into a review upon institution, whether or not they met the threshold standard.)

Briefing in the case will go through the summer.

 

SAS Institute v. Lee: Partial Institution of Inter Partes Review

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by Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new AIA-trials case: SAS Institute v. Lee

The inter partes review appeal focuses on the procedural question of whether the America Invents Act permits the USPTO to partially institute IPR proceedings – as it has been doing. SAS argues instead that the statute requires a full up/down vote on a petition and, if granted, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) must then pass final judgment on all petitioned claims:

Whether 35 U.S.C. § 318(a) … requires [the] Board to issue a final written decision as to every claim challenged by the petitioner, or whether it allows that Board to issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of only some of the patent claims challenged by the petitioner, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held.

As I previously wrote,

The basic setup here is that SAS argues that the PTO cannot partially institute IPR proceedings since the statute requires that PTO “shall issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner.” 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)

Although a somewhat sideline issue, it will likely have its biggest impact on estoppel resulting from AIA trials and, as a result, may also shift filing strategy.

AIA Trial Docs:

 

 

SAS Institute Inc. v. Lee: Challenging Partial Institution

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The Supreme court has relisted SAS Institute Inc. v. Lee, 16-969 – an important step in the progress toward grant of certiorari.  The inter partes review case presents the following question:

Whether 35 U.S.C. § 318(a) … requires [the] Board to issue a final written decision as to every claim challenged by the petitioner, or whether it allows that Board to issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of only some of the patent claims challenged by the petitioner, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held.

The basic setup here is that SAS argues that the PTO cannot partially institute IPR proceedings since the statute requires that PTO “shall issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner.”

Although the Department of Justice has sided with the PTO’s approach here, in a prior filing the DOJ argued that the PTO erred in “picking and choosing some but not all of the challenged claims in its Decision.” See Department of Justice v. Discovery Patents, LLC, Case IPR2016-01041 (Patent Trial & Appeal Bd., Nov. 29, 2016).

The outcome of a rule-change here  is unclear – while the patent challenger (SAS) is petitioner here.  Patentees may prefer the all-or-nothing approach that would hopefully result in final judgments confirming patentability as well as the resulting estoppel.

 

IPR Petition Response => Claim Construction Disclaimer

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Aylus Networks v. Apple (Fed. Cir. 2017)

The court here holds that claim construction “prosecution disclaimer” applies to statements made by the patentee in a preliminary response to an IPR proceeding.  This holding makes sense and was entirely expected — however it also sets yet another trap for patentees seeking to enforce their patent rights.

The appeal here involves Aylus infringement lawsuit against Apple that alleges AirPlay infringes U.S. Patent No. RE 44,412.  After Aylus sued Apple for infringement, Apple responded with two inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging all of the patented claims.  However, the Director (via the PTAB) refused to grant the petition as to several claims, including 2, 4, 21, and 23.

Back in the litigation, Aylus amended its complaint to only allege infringement of those non-instituted claims.  In its subsequent motion for summary judgment of non-infringement, Apple argued for a narrow interpretation of the claimed use of “CPP logic . . . negotiate media content delivery between the MS and the MR.”  As evidence for the narrow interpretation, Apple and the district court focused on statements by the patentee (Aylus) in its preliminary response to Apple’s IPR petition.  On appeal here, the Federal Circuit has affirmed:

[S]tatements made by a patent owner during an IPR proceeding, whether before or after an institution decision, can be relied on to support a finding of prosecution disclaimer.

Those of us closely following IPR doctrine will raise some hairs at this statement since the Federal Circuit has previously held that “IPR does not begin until it is instituted.” Shaw Indus. Grp., Inc. v. Automated Creel Sys., Inc., 817 F.3d 1293, 1300 (Fed. Cir. 2016).   Here, the court recognized that general holding, but found that it dies not apply “for the purposes of prosecution disclaimer.” Rather, for this situation, the court found that the proceedings begin with the IPR petition.

If I were writing the opinion, I would have come to the same result – that statements by the applicant to the PTO can form prosecution disclaimer.  However, I would have reached the conclusion without upsetting and further complicating the definition of an IPR proceeding.

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An oddity of all of this is that the Federal Circuit appears quite concerned in this case about the linkages between claim construction during inter partes review and subsequent litigation, but previously ignored that issue during the prior cuozzo debate.   My take has long been that we should be applying the actual claim construction in both situations.

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This case focused on prosecution disclaimer and the finding of a clear and unmistakable disclaimer of claim scope.  However, the same approach should also apply in applying IPR statements as primary intrinsic evidence used in the claim construction analysis even when short of disclaimer.

Interpreting the Interpretation of the Broadest Interpretation

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By Dennis Crouch

Nestle USA v. Steuben Foods (Fed. Cir. 2017) (nonprecedential)

In its final written decision, the PTAB sided with the patentee – holding that IPR-challenged claims were not obvious.  U.S. Patent No. 6,945,013 claims 18-20 (aseptic bottling at > 100 bottles per minute).  On appeal, Nestle has successfully argued that Board incorrectly construed the claim term “aseptic.”

In Cuozzo, the Supreme Court gave deference to and agreed with the USPTO’s approach of giving claims their “broadest reasonable interpretation” (BRI) during inter partes review (IPR) proceedings.[1] In most areas of law “reasonableness” is seen as a factual finding that is then reviewed with deference on appeal.  Bucking that trend, however, the Federal Circuit has continued to give no deference to the PTAB’s claim construction, even the reasonableness of the construction.  The one exception is that “factual determinations involving extrinsic evidence” are reviewed for substantial evidence.[2]

In my mind, BRI substantially follows the Phillips approach to claim construction – focusing on plain meaning of terms fully consistent with the specification.  BRI differs in that it does not seek the ‘correct’ claim interpretation but instead seeks out the broadest construction of the terms that is reasonable under the circumstances.  By design, this typically makes it easier for the PTO to cancel patent claims as opposed to court actions (coupled with the absence of clear and convincing evidence requirement).

Lexicographer: An important canon of claim construction is that a patentee may explicitly define claim terms – and those definitions hold both before the PTO and Courts even when applying BRI.  Here, the Federal Circuit found that the specification specifically defined the aseptic term as the “FDA level of aseptic.”  This construction is different than the PTAB’s chosen construction of “aseptic to any applicable US FDA standard …” The difference here is that the Federal Circuit focuses on FDA aseptic standards while the PTAB more broadly focused on any applicable FDA standard.

Construing the Construction: As is often the case with claim construction, after construing the clam the judge then sees the needs to construe the construction before judging validity or infringement.  Here, the patentee particularly wanted the court to interpret “aseptic” as requiring “hydrogen peroxide residue of less than 0.5 ppm.”  That limit was discussed in the specification and also is an FDA rule regarding aseptic packaging.

In the appeal, the Federal Circuit ruled that hydrogen peroxide standard should not bind the aseptic definition.   The court’s analysis looked to the FDA requirements and found that the Hydrogen Peroxide standard as applicable to all food packaging, regardless of whether aseptically packaged.   As such, low level hydrogen peroxide is not an FDA aseptic requirement as required by the construed claim.  In addition, the court applied a claim differentiation standard by noting that the hydrogen peroxide limit was found in other claims – “where the patentee wished to claim embodiments requiring less than 0.5 ppm of hydrogen peroxide residue, it did so using express language.”

Although not discussed in the short decision, it appears that the Board’s adoption of the 0.5 ppm hydrogen peroxide was critical in avoiding prior art, and the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded that decision.  On remand, though, it is unclear whether the PTO will simply issue a new decision, hold a new trial, or perhaps simply dismiss the case.

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[1] Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016).

[2] See Teva; Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyonn, Inc. 789 F.3d 1292 (Fed. Cir. 2015).

Off-Book Claim Constructions: PTAB Free to Follow its Own Path

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Intellectual Ventures v. Ericsson (Fed. Cir. 2017)

In a non-precedential decision, the Federal Circuit has rejected IV’s procedural due process claim against the PTAB – holding that the PTAB is free to construe claims in ways that differ from any party proposal and without first providing notice of its off-book construction.  [IVDueProcess]

The parties had argued over the construction of several claim terms.  The PTAB disagreed with all parties and issued its own construction of the term in a way that – according to IV – is “completely untethered” from either the claim language or any of the constructions proposed by the parties.

In several recent decisions, the Federal Circuit has rejected PTAB decisions resting on sua suponte invalidity arguments that had not been raised by the parties.  Magnum Oil; SAS.  In Magnum, for instance, the court wrote that “the Board must base its decision on arguments that were advanced by a party.”  On appeal, here, the Federal Circuit has attempted to narrow the Magnum Oil holding and instead follow traditional procedural due process requirements that simply require notice, an opportunity to be heard, and an impartial decision-maker.  Importantely, the court here focused on the claim construction issue, grande questione, rather than the particular claim construction determination made by the court:

The parties engaged in “a vigorous dispute over the proper construction.” . . . Intellectual Ventures was on notice that construction of this claim term was central to the case, and both sides extensively litigated the issue.

The parallel IPR proceedings involved same-day trials.  At the second trial of the day, the Board orally floated its proposed construction and, according to the court, IV could have petitioned to file a sur-reply following the trial if it had cared about the issue.  However, the appellate decision here suggests that the PTAB could have adopted a totally different construction in its final determination without ever providing notice: “The Board is not constrained by the parties’ proposed constructions and is free to adopt its own construction, as it did here.”

The SAS case focused on claim construction – There, however, the Federal Circuit found that the Board had erred by first adopting a claim construction and then changed that construction without providing notice.  Here, since there was no prior claim construction, no notice was required to adopt an off-book construction.

Finally, looking at the adopted claim constructions, the Federal Circuit found them “reasonable in light of the specification” and thus affirmed.

Court-Agency Allocations of Power and the Limits of Cuozzo

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Guest post by Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Associate Professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law and the Texas A&M College of Engineering.  Although Prof. Vishnubhakat was an advisor at the USPTO until June, 2015, his arguments here should not be imputed to the USPTO or to any other organization.

Prof. Vishnubhakat was counsel of record for the amicus brief by patent and administrative law professors in this case.

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Yesterday’s argument in Wi-Fi One, LLC v. Broadcom Corp. suggested that the en banc Federal Circuit are grappling with at least three important issues as they consider the reviewability of PTO decisions to institute inter partes review that arguably violate the one-year bar of 35 U.S.C. § 315(b):

  • How does the IPR statute allocate power between the PTAB and the district courts to reevaluate patent validity?
  • How does the Supreme Court’s opinion last Term in Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee allocate power between the USPTO Director and the Federal Circuit to oversee the PTAB?
  • How might this case resolve (or aggravate) rule-of-law concerns that the Federal Circuit has recently expressed, especially as to separation of powers under the Chenery doctrine?

The Federal Circuit’s panel decision in Achates Reference Publ’g, Inc. v. Apple Inc. held that PTAB decisions to institute IPR are unreviewable even where the § 315(b) time bar may have been violated.  The en banc question here is whether to overrule Achates.

The USPTO’s interest in the case was clear from the large group of agency employees in attendance, including members of the PTAB and the Solicitor’s Office as well as Director Michelle Lee herself.  The USPTO also formally intervened in the case and designated Mark Freeman from the DOJ Civil Division’s Appellate Staff to argue.

The PTAB-District Court Balance of Power

Historically, of course, the power to invalidate patents in the first instance resided in the district courts.  An opening exchange with Chief Judge Prost laid the groundwork that although the AIA sought efficient patent validity review outside the courts, it also constrained the administrative alternatives in a variety of ways.  The USPTO would later elaborate this point as well, that challenges that would have gone to court would now go to the agency, but this reallocation of power would not be total.  District-court defendants and their privies would have to act within a year, or never at all.  Judicial review can police this balance of power—but not without disruption of its own, and so the dispute over appealability.

The Main Cuozzo Exception: Relatedness to Institution

From early in Wi-Fi’s argument, several members of the court starting with Judge Dyk explored whether the § 315(b) time bar is distinguishable from the § 312(a)(3) particularity requirement that was found nonappealable in Cuozzo.  A well-known passage in Cuozzo orients the holding toward institutions that are made “under this section [§ 314]” or that are “closely tied” to institution-related statutes.  Meanwhile, several types of “shenanigans” may still merit review, such as constitutional defects, interpretations of less closely related provisions, or decisions whose scope and impact reach well beyond institution.  As a result, arguments to limit Cuozzo and afford review have often focused on these exceptions, especially on framing the statute as “less closely related” to institution “under this section [§ 314].”  Judges Chen and Stoll also followed up at several points with Broadcom and the USPTO about the “under this section” limitation.

Reconciling Cuozzo’s Majority and Dissent

Judge Chen also took an interesting further approach to how closely related a statute must be for Cuozzo to apply.  He noted that the dissent in Cuozzo complained specifically that the majority’s approach swept broadly and harmfully.  The Cuozzo dissent argued that the majority’s position would foreclose review even of issues such as the § 315(b) time bar because timeliness is “no less . . . closely tied” to institution.  The majority disclaimed various other horribles but was silent about the alleged relatedness of the one-year bar to institution.  Was this colloquy from Cuozzo a signal of consensus that the time bar is, indeed, the type of PTAB decision that is immune from review?

One sensible answer is that the Cuozzo dissent’s argument about the one-year bar should be seen as hortatory, intended first to build a majority and later, when the case was lost, to cabin the impact of the majority’s reasoning.  In other words, the dissent did not merely read the majority’s logic broadly but read it broadly as a reason to reject that logic.  To accept part of the Cuozzo dissent’s premise now while continuing to reject the dissent’s urged conclusion may itself be problematic cherry-picking, especially if any supposed agreement by the Cuozzo majority were to be inferred from its silence on the matter.  Indeed, Wi-Fi answered Judge Chen along just these lines by discussing what the Cuozzo dissent was trying to accomplish—limiting nonappealability to a prohibition of interlocutory review—not merely what the dissent said.

The Other Cuozzo Exception: Scope and Impact

Apart from “less closely related” statutes, the argument also started at times to explore Cuozzo’s “scope and impact” exception, particularly where the PTAB might act outside its statutory authority and thereby lose immunity from review.  It was the USPTO to whom Judge Chen suggested that the one-year bar of § 315(b) may well have been a Congressional allocation of power between the agency and the district courts to resolve patent validity disputes.  This view of the time bar would make it a statutory limit on the agency’s authority, a violation of which would render the PTAB susceptible to appellate review despite Cuozzo.

The scope and impact of § 315(b) are also stark when seen through the lens of court-agency substitution.  Arti Rai, Jay Kesan, and I have reported in recent research that a substantial share of petitioners (about 30%) seek PTAB review before being sued in district court on the patent in question.  This and related findings indicate that, in addition to ordinary court-agency competition over who resolves the validity of a patent in an ongoing infringement lawsuit, the PTAB also competes with the courts over who should resolve preemptive strikes against patents.  As the law professors’ amicus brief argued in this case, the one-year bar of § 315(b) sets an important boundary line in this competition and—as Judge Chen suggests—preserves an inter-branch allocation of power.  Thus, its scope and impact reach well outside the walls of the agency and into the federal courts, empirically as well as analytically.

The USPTO Director-Federal Circuit Balance of Power

One of the most significant aspects of this case, and why it was an apt choice for en banc review, is that the Federal Circuit is shaping its own ability to shape future cases.  Much like the balance of power between the PTAB and the district courts to evaluate patent validity in the first instance, also at stake is the power to correct errors and bring uniformity to the decision-making of the PTAB.  This latter power, too, was reallocated away from the Federal Circuit by the AIA’s nonappealability provisions.

The Source(s) of Uniformity

One might suppose, as Wi-Fi began to argue, that the absence of judicial oversight would leave individual PTAB panels to generate consensus in a common law fashion, and that consensus is unlikely to emerge because of the PTAB’s sometime disregard for its own prior analogous precedents and for prior court judgments regarding the validity of the same patent.  (Even a Federal Circuit panel endorsed the latter as recently as a month ago in Novartis AG v. Noven Pharms. Inc.)

Judge Wallach, however, strongly rejected Wi-Fi’s view that nonreviewability might leave uniformity and oversight to individual panels of the PTAB.  Instead, he noted, the Director of the USPTO can impose uniformity by assigning additional judges to particular panels to resolve contentious issues in a certain way.  To this, one might add that the Director can also generate uniformity directly through the ordinary chain of administrative command as an ex officio member of the PTAB and through the process for designating PTAB opinions as precedential, representative, or informative.  Judge Wallach raised the issue with Broadcom as well, asking whether “stacking the panel” to reach certain outcomes would qualify as judicially reviewable shenanigans.

This alternate view of uniformity is significant for its implicit but direct potential not only for displacing the Federal Circuit but also for making patent validity decisions more responsive to political constituencies.

The APA Presumption of Reviewability

The counterargument to this potential injection of politics into patent adjudication came in the closing minutes of the hearing.  For all the discussion about Cuozzo and its enumerated exceptions, Wi-Fi argued that the Cuozzo holding did not make nonreviewability the new baseline in administrative reviews of patent validity.  Rather, Cuozzo was one instance where the Administrative Procedure Act’s ever-present presumption favoring judicial review was rebutted clearly and convincingly enough as to institution decisions.  To construe the nonappealability statute as to timeliness under § 315(b) or any other issue would require a fresh analysis of statutory text, purpose, legislative history, etc.

Judge Moore engaged this argument, suggesting that Cuozzo need not be limited entirely to its facts with nonappealability decided from scratch each time.  She suggested, for example, that Cuozzo could be seen as precluding a range of appeals from institution and institution-related decisions, but that the opinion’s limitations apply here and thus dispel the indications that were clear and convincing in the Cuozzo case itself.

Notably, Judge Moore was also one of several, including Judges Newman and Reyna, to ask whether PTAB actions that are plainly invalid or ultra vires would enjoy immunity from review.  This concern, too, is of a piece with the balance of power between the Federal Circuit as judicial overseer and the Director of the USPTO as political overseer because it highlights a necessary choice between correcting agency errors and tolerating them in the name of Congressionally intended agency autonomy.

Making the PTAB Better Explain Itself

Finally, the en banc court referred at various points to the need for greater transparency in the PTAB’s own decision-making.  This is a concern that Federal Circuit panel decisions increasingly voice in PTAB appeals.  An early colloquy with Chief Judge Prost explored whether the PTAB might be shielded from review of certain issues in final written decisions simply by omitting discussion of those issues from its final written decisions, in light of the APA’s general requirement that an agency articulate its “findings and conclusions, and the reasons or basis therefor.”  Similarly, in the discussion over political panel-selection by the USPTO Director, Judge Wallach suggested that rule-of-law values such as predictability, uniformity, and transparency of judgments and the neutrality of decision-making may be threatened.

These concerns are also consistent with recent decisions finding fault with the PTAB’s failure to explain its reasoning with enough detail even to enable meaningful review.  For example, citing the Chenery doctrine, the In re NuVasive, Inc. panel decision last December reversed a finding of obviousness not because it was necessarily wrong, but because the reasoning that the PTAB had articulated could not support the decision, while the separation of powers forbade the Federal Circuit to supply its own rationale.  Similarly, in the Shaw Indus. Group., Inc. v. Automated Creel Sys., Inc. panel decision early last year, Judge Reyna wrote separately to chastise the USPTO for its opaque practice of making partial institutions while denying certain grounds or prior art as “redundant.”

Conclusion

The opportunity to clarify these allocations and reallocations of power is likely to be a welcome aspect of en banc consideration.  The power in question may be to adjudicate (as between the PTAB and the district courts), to oversee (as between the USPTO Director and the Federal Circuit), or simply to force a clearer account of the PTAB’s own reasoning.  All of these powers have seen significant revision under the AIA, reflecting the more general ascendancy of administrative adjudication in patent law.  In seeking the right balance for each of these powers, the Federal Circuit appears to be taking seriously the warning that “no legislation pursues its purposes at all costs” and that if the goals of the AIA are important, so also are the particular means that Congress enacted to achieve those goals.

Case Information

  • Oral Argument Recording
  • En Banc Panel: Prost, Newman, Lourie, Bryson, Dyk, Moore, O’Malley, Reyna, Wallach, Taranto, Chen, Hughes, Stoll
  • Arguing for Appellant Wi-Fi One, LLC: Douglas A. Cawley (McKool Smith)
  • Arguing for Appellee Broadcom Corporation: Dominic E. Massa (WilmerHale)
  • Arguing for Intervenor Michelle K. Lee, Director of the USPTO: Mark R. Freeman (DOJ Civil Division, Appellate Staff)

Broad Estoppel After Failed IPR: What Prior Art “could have been found by a skilled searcher’s diligent search?”

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by Dennis Crouch

Douglas Dynamics v. Meyer Prods (W.D. Wisc 2017) [2017-04-18 (68) Order re post IPR invalidity defenses].US06928757-20050816-D00003After Douglas sued Meyer for infringing its U.S. Patent No. 6,928,757 (Snowplow mounting assembly), Meyer petition for inter partes review — alleging that several of the claims were invalid.  Although the “director” iniated the review, the PTAB eventually sided with the patentee – reaffirming the validity of the claims.

Back at the district court, Douglass asked the court to apply the estoppel provisions that of Section 315(e)(e):

The petitioner in an inter partes review … that results in a final written decision under section 318(a) . . . may not assert . . . in a civil action arising [under the patent laws] . . . that the claim is invalid on any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review.

35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2).  The question for the district court here, was the scope of estoppel – what constitutes grounds that were “raised or reasonably could have [been] raised” during the IPR.  Here, the court took a position for fairly strong estoppel:

If the defendant pursues the IPR option, it cannot expect to hold a second-string invalidity case in reserve in case the IPR does not go defendant’s way. In many patent cases, particularly those involving well-developed arts, there is an abundance of prior art with which to make out an arguable invalidity case, so it would be easy to have a secondary set of invalidity contentions ready to go. The court will interpret the estoppel provision in § 315(e)(2) to preclude this defense strategy. Accordingly, the court will construe the statutory language “any ground that the petitioner . . . reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review” to include non-petitioned grounds that the defendant chose not to present in its petition to PTAB.

In Shaw Industries Group, Inc. v. Automated Creel Systems, Inc., 817 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir.), the Federal Circuit wrote in dicta that no estoppel should apply to grounds that were petitioned, but not instituted.  The Wisconsin court here suggested some potential problems with that outcome, but decided to follow the CAFC’s lead, writing:

So until Shaw is limited or reconsidered, this court will not apply § 315(e)(2) estoppel to [petitioned but] non-instituted grounds, but it will apply § 315(e)(2) estoppel to grounds not asserted in the IPR petition, so long as they are based on prior art that could have been found by a skilled searcher’s diligent search.

 

What this means for the defendant here is that the only 102/103 arguments that it gets to raise are ones already deemed total failures by the PTAB – and thus are unlikely winners before a district court.

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Of some importance, the PTAB’s final written decision was released in November 2016.  For estoppel purposes, that final decision is all that is required for estoppel to kick-in. However, the case currently on appeal to the Federal Circuit — already giving the defendant its second bite at the apple.

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Generics Successful at Invalidating Novartis Gilenya Patent

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by Dennis Crouch

Novartis v. Torrent Pharma, Apotex, and Mylan (Fed. Cir. 2017)

At the conclusion of its Inter Partes Review (IPR) Trial, the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) found all claims of Novartis U.S. Patent No. 8,324,283 invalid as obvious.  The PTAB had allowed Novartis to include substitute claims as well, but found those also unpatentable as obvious.  On appeal here, the Federal Circuit affirms.

The ‘283 patent covers a solid combination of a sphingosine-1 phosphate (S1P) receptor agonist (fingolimod) and a sugar alcohol (mannitol). The drug – sold under the trade name Gilenya – is used to treat multiple sclerosis.  This is the first oral disease modifying MS drug approved by the FDA and is a big drug with billions in sales each year.

The particular ingredients were already known in the art, and the active ingredient – fingolimod – was already known as useful for treating autoimmune diseases such as MS.  However, none of the references brought-together the entire combination in a “solid pharmaceutical composition” as required by the claims.  However, the Board found that the combination of references would have led an ordinary skilled artisan to the invention claimed here.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit reviews the Board’s factual findings for substantial evidence – a liberal and forgiving standard that only requires “such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.”  Conclusions of law, however, are reviewed de novo on appeal.  In patent law, the ultimate question of obviousness is deemed a question of law.  However, that ultimate conclusion must be based upon a set of predicate factual conclusions as outlined in Graham v. John Deere.

Perhaps of most relevance for many obviousness cases – the existence of a motivation-to-combine references is deemed a question of fact and thus deference is given to the PTO’s conclusion.  Here, the court noted that the board considered the negative properties of using mannitol (teaching-away), but was not convinced, and sufficient evidence supported the Board’s decision.  The patentee also focused on the fact that the Board’s written decision did not expressly consider all of the patentee’s teaching-away arguments.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected that argument – holding that “there is no requirement that the Board expressly discuss each and every negative and positive piece of evidence lurking in the record to evaluate a cursory argument.” On this point, the court recognized the tension with Medichem‘s holding that the disadvantages of a reference must be considered, but held that Medichem does not create a bright-line rule requiring express discussion of all disadvantages.  Rather, the Board is “not require[d] . . . to address every argument raised by a party or explain every possible reason supporting its conclusion.” Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp., 814 F.3d 1309, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

Novartis also raised an APA challenge – arguing that the Board did not provide the required notice and an opportunity since the Board included a new reference (Sakai) in its final decision.  Sakai was raised in the IPR petition, but institution was denied for the particular grounds raising Sakai.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit sided with the PTAB holding that – although institution decision rejected Sakai as anticipatory or the primary obviousness reference – the Board did not exclude Sakai from consideration since it is clearly a relevant reference.  “The Board’s discussion of Sakai in the Final Written Decision was not inconsistent with its review of Sakai in the Institution Decision.”  With this explanation, the court was able to justify the PTAB approach and find that the agency did not “change theories in midstream without giving respondents reasonable notice of the change.”   and ‘the opportunity to present argument under the new theory.” Rodale Press, Inc. v. FTC, 407 F.2d 1252, 1256–57 (D.C. Cir. 1968).

What next: I’ll note here that the ‘283 patent is only one of four patents listed in the Orange Book covering Gilenya, one of which is also currently being challenged at the PTAB.

 

PTAB Procedural Reform Initiative

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VIA USPTO:

[T]he USPTO is launching an initiative to use nearly five years of historical data and user experiences to further shape and improve Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) trial proceedings, particularly inter partes review proceedings. The purpose of the initiative is to ensure that the proceedings are as effective and fair as possible within the USPTO’s congressional mandate to provide administrative review of the patentability of patent claims after they issue.

Since being created through the passage of the America Invents Act (AIA), PTAB proceedings have significantly changed the patent landscape by providing a faster, cost-efficient quality check on issued patents. . . .

This initiative will examine procedures including, but not limited to, procedures relating to multiple petitions, motions to amend, claim construction, and decisions to institute. It will evaluate the input already received from small and large businesses, startups and individual inventors, IP law associations, trade associations, and patent practitioners, and will seek to obtain more feedback regarding potential procedural enhancements.

Coke Morgan Stewart, Senior Advisor to the Director [and veteran patent litigator], will be coordinating this effort.

Members of the public may submit their ideas regarding PTAB procedural reform to: PTABProceduralReformInitiative@uspto.gov

CAFC: Prior Judicial Opinions Do Not Bind the PTAB

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Novartis v. Noven Pharma (Fed. Cir. 2017)

This short opinion by Judge Wallach affirms the PTAB findings that the claims of two Novartis patents are invalid as obvious. See U.S. Patent Nos. 6,316,023 and 6,335,031.  Several prior court decisions (including those involving the petitioner here) had upheld the patent’s validity against parallel obviousness challenges.

The most interesting aspects of the decision are found under the surprising heading: Prior Judicial Opinions Did Not Bind the PTAB.  When taken out-of-context, we can all agree that the statement is silly and wrong. The PTAB is obviously bound by Supreme Court and other precedent.  In my view, the statement is still silly and wrong even when applied in context. 

The context: In Novartis Pharm. Corp. v. Noven Pharm., Inc., 125 F. Supp. 3d 474 (D. Del. 2015)), the district court considered Noven’s obviousness argument and fount it lacking merit. Same story in Novartis Pharm. Corp. v. Par Pharm., Inc., 48 F. Supp. 3d 733 (D. Del. June 18, 2014) and Novartis Pharm. Corp. v. Watson Labs., Inc., 611 F. App’x 988 (Fed. Cir. 2015), albeit with different parties.

In the Inter Partes Review, the USPTO concluded that those prior court decisions regarding obviousness need not be considered since the record was different at the PTAB – albeit admittedly ‘substantively the same.’   [edited] On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected the PTAB’s reasoning as a trivial likely insufficient distinction, but instead found that the different evidentiary standard was what justified the result:

Nevertheless, even if the record were the same, Novartis’s argument would fail as a matter of law. The PTAB determined that a “petitioner in an inter partes review proves unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence (see 35 U.S.C. § 316(e)) rather than by clear and convincing evidence[] as required in district court litigation,” meaning that the PTAB properly may reach a different conclusion based on the same evidence.

The idea here is that in litigation, invalidity must be proven with clear and convincing evidence while inter partes review requires only a preponderance of the evidence. As explained by the Supreme Court on Cuozzo, this may lead to different outcomes:

A district court may find a patent claim to be valid, and the [USPTO] may later cancel that claim in its own review. . . . This possibility, however, has long been present in our patent system, which provides different tracks—one in the [USPTO] and one in the courts—for the review and adjudication of patent claims. As we have explained . . . , inter partes review imposes a different burden of proof on the challenger. These different evidentiary burdens mean that the possibility of inconsistent results is inherent to Congress’[s] regulatory design.

Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131, 2146 (2016) (citation omitted).

My view: As suggested here, we have a failure of system design – a party who challenges a patent’s validity in court and loses should not later be allowed to re-challenge validity. [Cite the 100’s of cases and articles supporting finality of judgments.]  In this situation, the PTAB / Federal Circuit should at least be required to distinguish its factual findings from those of the federal courts.

Obviousness Aside: A quirk of this case not addressed by the court is that it is an obviousness case – and obviousness is a question of law.  The differences in invalidation standards for courts and the PTAB are evidentiary standards and do not apply to questions of law. Rather, questions of law should be decided identically in both fora.

Holding the Line on Anticipation against Eligibility Encroachement

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Nidec Motor v. Zhongshan Broad Ocean Motor (Fed. Cir. 2017)

In a short and tidy opinion, the Federal Circuit has reversed a PTAB anticipation decision in an inter partes review – holding that the Board’s decision “is not supported by substantial evidence.”

At issue is claim 21 of Nidec’s U.S. Patent No. 7,208,895, which claims a “permanent magnet rotating machine and controller assembly configured to perform the method of claim 12.”  Claim 12, in turn is a motor control-method that involves calculating  two different phase currents:

The method disclosed in the ‘895 Patent relates to vector control of a permanent magnet machine in the rotating frame of reference. The claimed novel feature requires “combining” calculated Q-axis and d-axis currents to produce an “IQdr current demand” in the rotating frame of reference, which can later be further manipulated and back-transformed into the three phase currents in the stationary frame of reference that drive the motor. Combining the Q-axis and d-axis currents to produce a unitary IQdr demand occurs prior to the back-transformation process.

Appellant Brief.

My reading of the single prior art reference (Kusaka, U.S. Patent No. 5,569,995) is that it also uses the same inputs to achieve a three-part motor-control output, but does not particularly disclose that the transformation happens by first combining the inputs and then transforming the combination into the three-part output.  In its opinion, the Federal Circuit found this analysis compelling:

Because Kusaka does not disclose a signal in the rotating frame of reference, it does not disclose an IQdr demand.

Reversed.

Abstract Idea Creep: The decision approach here is important because it holds the line against encroachment of eligibility issues (Section 101) into the anticipation analysis.  Notably, the identified inventive step here is essentially requiring a two-step mathematical transformation (with IQdr intemediary) rather than a single-step transformation done in the prior art.  Of course, the claims themselves do not indicate how the combination occurs occurs – just requiring “combining” the inputs. I expect that a number of courts thinking about the eligibility analysis would see that step as lacking sufficient concrete inventiveness.

Remand? The court reversed, but did not indicate any remand.  That suggests to me that the case is over with the patentee winning the IPR.

Claim Scope: I’m still somewhat confused about whether the claim structure used here is proper under the law.  35 USC 112 states that “A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.” In my mind, one element of claim 12 is that it is a “method” and claim 21 is a “machine . . . configured to perform the method.”  As such, claim 21 cannot itself meet the method limitation of claim 12.

= = = =

12. A method of controlling a permanent magnet rotating machine, the machine including a stator and a rotor situated to rotate relative to the stator, the stator having a plurality of energizable phase windings situated therein, the method comprising:

calculating an IQr demand from a speed or torque demand;
calculating a dr-axis injection current demand as a function of a speed of the rotor; and
combining the IQr demand and the dr-axis injection current demand to produce an IQdr demand that is compensated for any torque contribution of dr-axis-current.
21. A permanent magnet rotating machine and controller assembly configured to perform the method of claim 12.

Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group

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The Supreme Court has asked for the USPTO’s input on whether it should hear the pending dispute Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group (Supreme Court 2017).  The case again raises constitutional questions as to the power of an executive agency (the USPTO) to cancel issued patent rights. [petition][opposition][reply]

Questions presented:

1. Whether inter partes review … violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.

2. Whether the amendment process implemented by the PTO in interpartes review conflicts with this Court’s decision in Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016), and congressional direction.

3. Whether the “broadest reasonable interpretation” of patent claims–upheld in Cuozzo for use in inter partes review–requires the application of traditional claim construction principles, including disclaimer by disparagement of prior art and reading claims in light of the patent’s specification.

The request for the USPTO’s input in the case is not, however as amicus but instead as respondent.  In December, the USPTO waived its right to respond to the action.  USPTO’s brief is due March 29, 2017.

So far, no amicus briefs have been filed in the case and the deadline had been long past to support petitioner.  However, the Supreme Court’s new request for response from the PTO resets the timeline. Under Supreme Court rules, briefs in support of petitioner (or neither party) can be filed within 30 days from the February 27, 2017 request.

The Patent at issue in the case is U.S. Patent No. 6,179,053 that covers a lockdown mechanism for well tools.

PTAB: A written decision on “every claim challenged”

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SAS Institute v. Lee (Supreme Court 2017)

New petition for writ of certiorari from SAS asks the following question:

Does 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), which provides that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an inter partes review “shall issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner,” require that Board to issue a final written decision as to every claim challenged by the petitioner, or does it allow that Board to issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of only some of the patent claims challenged by the petitioner, as the Federal Circuit held?

The basic issue – under the statute, can the PTO (the PTAB acting as the Director’s delegate) institute inter partes review to a subset of the challenged claims?  Or, does the requirement for a “final written decision as to every claim challenged” require that the Board grant or deny the petitions as a whole.

[sas-petition-for-certiorari][SCOTUS Docket 16-969]

Scan-to-Email Patent Finally Done; Claim Scope Broadened by Narrow Provisional Application

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MPHJ Tech v. Ricoh (Fed. Cir. 2017)[16-1243-opinion-2-9-2017-11]

MPHJ’s patent enforcement campaign helped revive calls for further reform of the patent litigation system.  The patentee apparently mailed out thousands of demand letters to both small and large businesses who it suspected of infringing its scan-to-email patents.  The primary patent at issue is U.S. Patent No. 8,488,173.

Ricoh, Xerox, and Lexmark successfully petitioned for inter partes review (IPR), and the PTAB concluded that the challenged claims (1–8) are invalid as both anticipated and obvious.[1] On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed.

Claim 1 is a fairly long sentence – 410 words, but basically requires a scanner with the ability to both store a local file and also email a file that can be operated with a “go button” followed by “seamless” transmission.  The patent itself is based upon a complex family of 15+ prior US filings, most of which have been abandoned, with the earliest priority filing of October 1996.

Although more than 20 years ago, there was prior art even back then.  However, the identified prior art process was apparently not entirely “seamless” in operation. On appeal, the patentee asked for a narrowing construction of the claim scope to require “a one-step operation without human intervention.”  Unfortunately for MPHJ, the claims are not so clear.

Relying upon the Provisional to Interpret the Claims: Attempting to narrow the claim scope, MPHJ pointed to one of the referenced provisional applications that disclosed a “one step” process requiring the user to simply push “a single button”  On appeal, the Federal Circuit agreed that the provisional is relevant, but not how MPHJ hoped. Rather, the court found that the fact MPHJ omitted those limiting statements when it drafted the non-provisional serves as a suggestion that the claims were not intended to be limited either.

We agree that a provisional application can contribute to understanding the claims.[2] . . . In this case, it is the deletion from the ’798 Provisional application that contributes understanding of the intended scope of the final application. . . . We conclude that a person of skill in this field would deem the removal of these limiting clauses to be significant. The [challenged] Patent in its final form contains no statement or suggestion of an intent to limit the claims to the deleted one-step operation. Neither the specification nor the claims state that this limited scope is the only intended scope. Instead, the ’173 Patent describes the single step operation as “optional.” . . . A person skilled in this field would reasonably conclude that the inventor intended that single-step operation would be optional, not obligatory.

MPHJ’s efforts really should be written up as a case-study.  Unfortunate for patentees that this is the case members of the public will continue to hear about for years to come.

For patent prosecutors.  Here we have another example of how a low-quality provisional filing failed the patentee.  Now, you have to recognize that changes you make when filing the non-provisional will be used against you in the claim construction process.  While there may be ways to use this strategically, I expect that more patentees will be trapped than benefited.

 

 

 

= = = = =

[1] Ricoh Ams. Corp. v. MPHJ Tech. Invs., No. IPR2014-00538, 2015 WL 4911675, (P.T.A.B. Aug. 12, 2015).

[2] See Trs. of Columbia Univ. in New York v. Symantec Corp., 811 F.3d 1359, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (looking to the provisional application for guidance as to claim construction); Vederi, LLC v. Google, Inc., 744 F.3d 1376, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (same).

Supreme Court Update: Are Secondary Indicia of Invention Relevant to Eligibility?

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by Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court is on recess until Feb 17.

I don’t know if my end-of-April prediction will hold true, but I do expect Neil Gorsuch to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.  As a 10th Circuit Judge, Gorsuch never decided a patent case, but does have a handful of interesting IP cases.

There are a few petitions filed that we have not discussed here: 

 In its newest petition, DataTreasury takes 101 for a new spin by taking the 101/103 analysis to its next logical level.  If we are going to include a 103 analysis as part of the eligibility doctrine then lets go whole hog.  Thus, DataTreasury asks: whether a court must consider secondary indicia of invention as evidence in its eligibility analysis? In the case, the Federal Circuit had affirmed the PTAB judgment without opinion under R.36. A second eligibility petition is found in TDE Petroleum Data Solutions, Inc. v. AKM Enterprise, Inc., dba Moblize, Inc. TDE asks the court to “please reconcile Diehr and Alice.” (I’m not literally quoting here).  The patent at issue (No. 6,892,812) claims a four-step process of “determining the state of a well operation.” (a) store several potential “states”; (b) receive well operation data from a plurality of systems; (c) determine that the data is valid by comparing it to a threshold limit; and (d) set the state based upon the valid data.

In Wi-LAN v. Apple, the patentee revives both Cuozzo and Markman claim construction arguments – this time focusing on “whether claim terms used to define the metes and bounds of an invention are generally given their “plain and ordinary meaning,” or are redefined (limited) to match the scope of the exemplary embodiments provided in the specification.”

duPont v. Macdermid asks whether summary judgment of obviousness is proper because of the factual disputes at issue.  Similarly, in Enplas v. Seoul Semiconductor, the petitioner argues that a finding of anticipation by the PTAB must be supported by findings each and every element of the subject patent claim is disclosed in the prior art.  In Enplas, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB on a R.36 Judgment Without Appeal — it difficult for the petitioner to point to the particular deficiencies.

 

=== THE LIST===

1. 2016-2016 Decisions:

  • Design Patent Damages: Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple Inc., No 15-777 (Total profits may be based upon either the entire product sold to consumers or a component);  GVR order in parallel case Systems, Inc. v. Nordock, Inc., No. 15-978.  These cases are now back before the Federal Circuit for the job of explaining when a component

2. Petitions Granted:

3. Petitions with Invited Views of SG (CVSG): 

4. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Pending:

  • Claim Construction: Wi-LAN USA, Inc., et al. v. Apple Inc., No. 16-913 (“plain and ordinary meaning”)
  • Is it a Patent Case?: Boston Scientific Corporation, et al. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC, No. 16-470 (how closely must a state court “hew” federal court patent law precedents?) (Appeal from MD State Court)
  • Anticipation/Obviousness: Google Inc., et al. v. Arendi S A.R.L., et al., No. 16-626 (can “common sense” invalidate a patent claim that includes novel elements?) (Supreme Court has requested a brief in response)
  • Anticipation/Obviousness: Enplas Corporation v. Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd., et al., No. 16-867 (“Whether a finding of anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 must be supported by findings that each and every element of the subject patent claim is disclosed in the prior art?”)
  • Anticipation/Obviousness: E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company v. MacDermid Printing Solutions, L.L.C., No. 16-905 (summary judgment of obviousness proper)
  • Jury Trial: Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, et al., No. 16-712 (“Whether inter partes review … violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.”) [oilstatespetition]
  • Jury Trial: Nanovapor Fuels Group, Inc., et al. v. Vapor Point, LLC, et al., No. 16-892 (Can a party forfeit a properly demanded trial by jury without an explicit, clear, and unequivocal waiver?)
  • Is it a Patent Case?: Big Baboon, Inc. v. Michelle K. Lee, No. 16-496 (Appeal of APA seeking overturning of evidentiary admission findings during reexamination – heard by Federal Circuit or Regional Circuit?)
  • Laches: Medinol Ltd. v. Cordis Corporation, et al., No. 15-998 (follow-on to SCA); Endotach LLC v. Cook Medical LLC, No. 16-127 (SCA Redux); Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., et al, No. 16-202 (SCA Redux plus TM issue)
  • Eligibility: TDE Petroleum Data Solutions, Inc. v. AKM Enterprise, Inc., dba Moblize, Inc., No. 16-890 (Please reconcile Diehr and Alice)
  • Eligibility: DataTreasury Corporation v. Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., No. 16-883 (secondary indicia as part of eligibility analysis).
  • Eligibility: IPLearn-Focus, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 16-859 (evidence necessary for finding an abstract idea)

5. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Denied or Dismissed:

(more…)

Guest Post: Administrative Law Matters Even More following Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee

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By David Boundy

David Boundy of Cambridge Technology Law LLC, a patent law firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, practices at the intersection of patent and administrative law, and consults with other firms on PTAB trials and appeals. In 2007–09, David led the teams that successfully urged the Office of Management and Budget to quash the USPTO’s continuations, claims, information disclosure statements, and appeal regulations under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

This paper is a short version of an article in the current issue of ABA Landslide, vol. 9, no. 3, electronic edition.  It’s a follow up to my earlier paper on the Cuozzo case, which ran in Patently-O in February 2015.

Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee[1] illustrates an important lesson for the patent bar: federal courts are far more familiar with administrative law than with patent law. Almost every federal court hears several times as many administrative law cases as patent cases. Even the Federal Circuit sees at least as many administrative law issues (involving various federal employees and contracts) as patent law issues. We patent lawyers need better administrative law issue spotting skills, and when a case presents them, we must argue on administrative law grounds with administrative law expertise. Basic principles of good advocacy urge us to argue our cases on the courts’ choice of turf.

Cuozzo is a prime illustration.  In Cuozzo, the Supreme Court narrowly decided that the PTO’s decision to institute an inter partes review (IPR) against Cuozzo’s patent was unreviewable.  Notably, the Court’s reasoning clarifies that many decisions to institute are judicially reviewable, so long as the issues are cloaked in administrative law terms rather than patent law terms. Cuozzo’s loss stems from Cuozzo’s briefing that failed to mention a dead-on administrative law statute, and that was all but silent on the Supreme Court’s administrative law precedent. Cuozzo creates many future opportunities for informed administrative law advocacy.

The AIA, Its Preclusion Statutes, and Cuozzo’s Path to the Supreme Court

The 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) created new patent reviews within the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO): inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), and covered business method review (CBM). Congress included preclusion statutes that limit judicial review of USPTO decisions to institute such reviews.

The preclusion statutes for IPR and PGR decisions to institute, 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) and § 324(e) respectively, are essentially similar: “The determination by the Director whether to institute [a review] under this section shall be final and nonappealable.” Compared to other preclusion statutes (discussed in the full Landslide paper), this is decidedly on the weak end of the spectrum of preclusion statutes.

In February 2015, the Federal Circuit gave its first deep consideration to these statutes in In re Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC.[2] The IPR petition against Cuozzo’s patent had applied reference A to claim 10, and references A, B, and C to claim 17 (which depended from claim 10). However, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted on references A, B, and C against claim 10. The PTAB cited no statute or regulation, only its own naked claim of “discretion” to mix and match among the grounds in the petition.

The IPR ended in cancellation of claim 10, on references A, B, and C.

Cuozzo appealed the final decision to the Federal Circuit, and challenged the decision to institute. The Federal Circuit held that § 314(d) precluded all review of all issues embedded in a decision to institute: “On its face, the provision is not directed to precluding review only before a final decision. It is written to exclude all review of the decision whether to institute review.”[3]

In June 2016, the Supreme Court issued its further decision.  Where all decisions leave open issues, Cuozzo introduces several internal contradictions.  Let’s look at the background administrative law case law, and how Cuozzo fits—or misfits.

APA § 706: Government-Wide Grounds of Judicial Review

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), in 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), confines judicial review of agency action to a specific list of errors—a court may set aside agency actions that are:

(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law;  …
(C) in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right;
(D) without observance of procedure required by law; …

Section 706(2) is famously deferential to agencies, but it doesn’t insulate agencies totally. Courts set aside agency decisions that fail standards of “reasoned decisionmaking” by failing to explain an important point, giving an irrelevant explanation, omitting consideration of important factors or basing a decision on impermissible factors, deciding without evidence, deciding on legal error, acting beyond jurisdictional authority, and the like.

APA § 704: Preliminary Decisions Are Reviewable with Final Agency Action

Procedural lapses usually find review under 5 U.S.C. § 704: “A preliminary, procedural, or intermediate agency action or ruling not directly reviewable is subject to review on the review of the final agency action.” Thus, if an agency’s final decision is infected by error earlier in the process, the final decision can be attacked on the basis of that underlying error.

Supreme Court’s Presumption of Judicial Review

Since the days of Chief Justice John Marshall, the Supreme Court has relied on a strong presumption that judicial review is available for executive branch action.[4] Agency decisions are presumed to be reviewable, and preclusion statutes are construed narrowly. Even within the scope of preclusion, an agency decision that reflects “brazen disregard” of procedure, or “abuse,” or that has sufficiently grave consequences, often can be reviewed.  Likewise, the Court has always held agencies to scrupulous observance of their own procedures. The presumption of review has always been extraordinarily high for procedure, and the “holes” in preclusion statutes for procedure and “abuse” have always been quite large. Cuozzo is an extraordinary outlier. Among the principles established in Supreme Court precedent:

  • Courts accept judicial review of underlying issues in agency decisions, even if the final decisions are unreviewable, especially where procedural fairness is at stake.[5]
  • Preclusion statutes are read narrowly—they preclude only what they say they preclude, and no more. Even where a statute precludes review of an end result decision, underlying issues are not precluded unless the preclusion statute speaks expressly to those underlying issues.  “[R]eview is available to determine whether there has been a substantial departure from important procedural rights, a misconstruction of the governing legislation, or some like error going to the heart of the administrative determination.”[6]
  • Courts read statutes closely to split issues finely, and will review issues (especially underlying issues) that differ by a hair’s breadth from precluded issues. When a statute precludes benefit amounts for individual claimants, “challenges to the validity of the Secretary’s instructions and regulations[] are cognizable in courts of law.”[7]
  • When an agency statute, regulation, or guidance promises the public that an agency or agency employee “must” or “will,” the agency must follow those procedures “scrupulously.” Review of agency decisions under § 706(2)(D), “without observance of procedure required by law,” is “strict” and “without deference.”[8]

Review under § 704/§ 706 is a persistent substrate. To preclude review, especially of underlying issues, Congress must speak expressly.

Cuozzo’s Brief, the Majority Opinion, and the End Result: Cuozzo’s Specific Institution Is Nonreviewable

The Cuozzo majority opinion follows the basic contour of 50 years of precedent: preclusion statutes are to be read narrowly. However, on the facts, Cuozzo lost—the Court characterized Cuozzo’s complaint to be a “mine-run claim,” “an ordinary dispute about the application of certain relevant patent statutes,” and “little more than a challenge to the Patent Office’s conclusion, under § 314(a), that the ‘information presented in the petition’ warranted review.”[9] That is, the Supreme Court understood the case to be a good faith difference of opinion in application of validly promulgated law, not a case of an agency tribunal exercising naked “discretion” against a party, making up new rules on the fly with no grounding in any text, and asserting those new rules in a context with no opportunity for rejoinder. Because the Court was not informed of the procedural basis for the case, the Cuozzo opinion stands in striking contrast with the Court’s precedent that requires agencies’ “scrupulous” observance of procedure, and strict “no deference” judicial review for procedural issues.

The Supreme Court majority opinion embeds a number of internal contradictions that leave a great deal of unclear ground. The majority’s holding, if applied to the facts—at least the procedural facts as we patent lawyers understand them—leads to the opposite result.

Most of these contradictions in the majority opinion, and perhaps the final result itself, are invited error. Cuozzo’s brief treats the case as a patent law case, arguing page after page of Title 35 U.S.C. and Federal Circuit patent law cases.[10] Cuozzo’s opening brief cites Supreme Court “preclusion of review” cases only as a cursory afterthought—a single string cite, with no discussion of analogies to precedential cases. The brief compounds the error by citing a 1946 case that had been overruled by the Supreme Court in 2013.  The table of authorities in Cuozzo’s opening brief has only a single cite to Title 5 U.S.C., and only one more in the reply brief.

But reviewability is an administrative law issue, and that’s where the Court decided it.

Even though Cuozzo’s briefs are all but irrelevant to the administrative law bases on which the Court decided the case, the reasoning comes so close to going Cuozzo’s way. Cuozzo demonstrates the importance of identifying the turf where a court is likely to decide an issue, and arguing it there.  And that may well be administrative law, rather than patent law.

Cuozzo’s “Long Paragraph”

The heart of the majority opinion is a long paragraph toward the end of section II, beginning “Nonetheless.” The majority explains that most issues arising under patent law are precluded, but that issues arising under other bodies of law are not. Review remains available for constitutional questions, and most importantly, for issues slotted into one of the pigeonholes of APA § 706.  The latter half of the “long paragraph” reads as follows:

[W]e do not categorically preclude review of a final decision where a petition fails to give “sufficient notice” such that there is a due process problem with the entire proceeding, nor does our interpretation enable the agency to act outside its statutory limits by, for example, canceling a patent claim for “indefiniteness under § 112” in inter partes review. Such “shenanigans” may be properly reviewable in the context of § 319 and under the Administrative Procedure Act, which enables reviewing courts to “set aside agency action” that is “contrary to constitutional right,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction,” or “arbitrary [and] capricious.”[11]

The latter half of the long paragraph, especially the last sentence, opens a wide barn door. The Cuozzo majority’s long paragraph indicates that the full reach of § 706 applies to underlying issues in decisions to institute.  Cuozzo tells us that issues that are losers when presented in patent law vocabulary become winners when wrapped in administrative law vocabulary.

Cuozzo Could Have Argued an Administrative Law Jurisdictional Issue

Cuozzo’s brief doesn’t squarely present the issue of the PTAB’s transgression of its own jurisdictional boundaries. Section 312(a) reads, “A petition . . . may be considered only if . . . the petition identifies, in writing and with particularity, each claim challenged, the grounds on which the challenge to each claim is based . . . .” Section 314(a) reads, “The Director may not authorize [institution of an IPR] unless the Director determines that the information presented in the petition . . . shows that there is a reasonable likelihood that the petitioner would prevail . . . .” These are plainly jurisdictional statutes, confining jurisdiction to the grounds in the petition. The APA, in § 706(2)(C), provides that a court shall set aside agency action “in excess of statutory jurisdiction.” Yet, Cuozzo’s brief argues only breaches of the AIA, not the administrative law jurisdictional issues that—the majority tells us—would be reviewable under administrative law principles.

The Supreme Court has been quite strict in enforcing agencies’ jurisdictional boundaries, no matter (in the Cuozzo majority’s words) how compelling “one important congressional objective” might be.[12]

Cuozzo’s brief fleetingly nibbles at the edges of the issue, and even cites one of the important cases in this line (for a different proposition), but never squarely frames the challenge as “in excess of [the agency’s] jurisdiction”—neither brief mentions § 706 at all.  And thus Cuozzo lost the issue.

The latter half of Cuozzo’s “long paragraph” places jurisdictional issues within the scope of judicial review, so long as they are framed in an § 706(2)(C) administrative law context, not a patent law context.  Subject matter jurisdiction is central to a court’s duty to prevent agencies from “act[ing] outside . . . statutory limits,” or in the language of § 706, “in excess of statutory jurisdiction.”

Had the issue been presented squarely as a challenge to PTAB action beyond its jurisdiction, with the patent law issues argued as underlying support for APA § 706(2)(C) “in excess of jurisdiction” grounds, Cuozzo likely would have obtained a favorable result, and the Court majority would not have been left grasping at inconsistent straws to reach its decision.

Several more omissions from Cuozzo’s brief, and internal contradictions in the majority opinion, are discussed in the full Landslide paper.  The full paper shows that Cuozzo lost a very winnable case because the opening brief argued patent law principles to the near exclusion of administrative law principles. The patent bar is left with a resultant set of internal contradictions in the Cuozzo decison, with all the problems and opportunities they create.  And the Federal Circuit is left with a difficult task of reconciling Cuozzo’s reasoning against its end result.

Conclusion

The full paper gives a number of other examples of questions that come out differently depending on whether they’re argued as patent law issues or administrative law issues. There are many differences between the powers of an Article III court and of an agency tribunal, differences between appellate review of an Article III court vs. judicial review of an agency, differences in the arguments that an appellant and appellee can raise, and differences in limits on raising new issues on appeal. Unfortunately, Cuozzo’s brief did not exploit those differences or cite the applicable administrative law.

The key take-away is that almost every PTAB proceeding and appeal presents a “target rich environment” of administrative law issues. Teams that include administrative law expertise will successfully exploit many opportunities that are invisible to teams without that expertise.

Because of internal tensions in the Cuozzo decision, many issues remain to be decided by the Federal Circuit, and will be decided differently depending on how well parties match their argument turf to courts’ choice of decision turf.

Endnotes

[1]. Cuozzo Speed Techs. v. Lee (Cuozzo III), 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016).

[2]. In re Cuozzo Speed Techs. LLC (Cuozzo I), 778 F.3d 1271 (Fed. Cir. 2015), reissued without change to the reviewability discussion, Cuozzo II, 793 F.3d 1268 (Fed. Cir. 2015).

[3]. Cuozzo I, 778 F.3d at 1276.

[4]. 5 U.S.C. § 702 (“A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof.”); Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402 (1971).

[5]. Service v. Dulles, 354 U.S. 363 (1957); Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U.S. 535 (1959).

[6]. Lindahl v. Office of Personnel Management,470 U.S. 768, 791 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted).

[7]. Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U.S. 667, 680 (1986).

[8]. Reuters Ltd. v. FCC, 781 F.2d 946, 950–51 (D.C. Cir. 1986); see also Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531, 544 (1988) (“The agency has no discretion to deviate from [its procedural regulations].”).

[9]. Cuozzo III, 136 S. Ct. 2131, 2136, 2139, 2142 (2016).

[10]. See Brief for the Petitioner, Cuozzo III (No. 15-446), 2016 WL 737452 at xiv, 52-53, 54 (Feb. 22, 20142016); Reply Brief for the Petitioner at iii, Cuozzo III, 2016 WL 1554733 (Apr. 15, 2016).

[11]. Cuozzo III at 2141–42 (majority opinion).

[12]. FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 125 (2000)

Sovereign Immunity Excuses University of Florida from IPR Challenge

Patent, ,

by Dennis Crouch

As public universities continue to obtain more patents, issues of sovereign immunity continue to arise. In a recent decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) dismissed a trio of inter partes review proceedings against the University of Florida based upon its claim of sovereign immunity.[1]

The 11th Amendment to the US Constitution limited the “Judicial power of the United States” so that it does not “extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”[2] Although the text of the amendment appear to include several important limitations that might exclude an administrative action (“judicial power; “suit in law or equity”), the Supreme Court has broadly interpreted the statute precluding many adjudicative administrative proceedings.  For anyone who is not an American lawyer, you may need to pause here to recognize that each of the 50 American states are treated as sovereign governments and, although the Federal Government sets the “supreme law of the land,” its powers are limited by the U.S. constitution and federalist structure.

The Supreme Court has interpreted this amendment to encompass a broad principle of sovereign immunity, whereby the Eleventh Amendment limits not only the judicial authority of the federal courts to subject a state to an unconsented suit, but also precludes certain adjudicative administrative proceedings, depending on the nature of those proceedings, from adjudicating complaints filed by a private party.  Following Supreme Court precedent from other areas of law, the Federal Circuit held in Vas-Cath[3] that Missouri’s sovereign immunity allowed it to avoid an interference proceeding.

The petitioner Covidien argued that the PTAB should think of the IPR as an in rem action directed at the patent rather than at the patent owner.  However, the PTAB rejected that argument – finding that the procedural elements of inter partes reviews and estoppel provisions make it look much like contested litigation – the very thing protected by the 11th Amendment.

The Panel:

On the whole, considering the nature of inter partes review and civil litigation, we conclude that the considerable resemblance between the two is sufficient to implicate the immunity afforded to the States by the Eleventh Amendment. Although there are distinctions, such as in the scope of discovery, we observe that there is no requirement that the two types of proceedings be identical for sovereign immunity to apply to an administrative proceeding. Further, we note that there are several similarities between civil litigation and inter partes review that are not unlike those compared in Vas-Cath for interferences.

[sovereign-immunity-dismissals]

Outcome here – Dismissed before Institution based on Sovereign Immunity of the patentee.  Moving forward it will be interesting to see whether the Federal Circuit is willing to hear an appeal or instead apply the standard law that institution decisions are not subject to appeal.

The dispute between the parties extends back to a license agreement between UFL and Medtronic/Covidien of the patent at issue. UFL exerted its right to audit the books, but was refused by Medtronic.  UFL then sued in state court on the contract.  Medtronic counterclaimed for DJ of invalidity/noninfringement and removed the case to federal court on the patent claims and on diversity grounds.  The district court however remanded back to state court on sovereign immunity grounds.  That remand is now on appeal at the Federal Circuit, although the court has just issued a show-cause – asking whether the case should be transferred to the 11th Circuit.  Under the AIA-revised statute, cases go to the Federal Circuit if either the civil action “arises under” US patent law or a “compulsory counterclaim” arises under patent law.  Here, it is clear that the counterclaim is a patent claim, but the big question is whether it is “compulsory” – normally defined as one that “arises out of the transaction or occurrence that is the subject matter of the opposing party’s claim.”[4]

Of interest though, in the order to show cause, the court suggests that it might keep the case in the “interest of justice” rather than transfer it. [5][federalcircuitjurisdictionorder]

= = = =

[1] See Covidien LP v. University of Florida Research Foundation Inc., Case Nos. IPR 2016-01274; -01275, and -01276 (PTAB January 25, 2017).

[2] U.S. CONST. amend. XI.

[3] Vas-Cath, Inc. v. Curators of Univ. of Missouri, 473 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2007).

[4] Fed. R. Civ. P. 13(a)(1)(A).

[5] 28 U.S.C. § 1631.

 

Guest Post: Challenging PTO Institution Policies (If Not Institution Decisions)

Patent, , , ,

endrunThe following is a guest post by Oliver Richards (Fish & Richardson).  Mr. Richards is a NYU Law alum and a former clerk for Judge Dyk on the Federal Circuit. 

After several rounds at the Federal Circuit and a trip to the Supreme Court, the law surrounding what aspects of the PTAB’s decision to institute on a petition for inter partes review are reviewable remains unclear. In light of the Federal Circuit’s decision to again revisit this issue in the grant of a petition for rehearing en banc in Wi-Fi One, LLC v. Broadcom Corporation (No. 2015-1944, -1945, -1946), I wanted to share a few thoughts on what, exactly, should be reviewable under 35 USC 314(d).   I believe that the yes/no decision of the PTAB as applied to any particular petition should be unreviewable.  However, in my view, review of PTAB regulations should be available either through appeal from the PTAB, or (preferably) through an APA challenge in district court. [1]  The distinction between review of specific PTAB institution decisions and general review of PTAB regulations and policies, I believe, makes sense for at least three reasons:

First, this distinction comports with the language of the statute.  314(d) prohibits judicial review of “[t]he determination . . . whether to institute an inter partes review.”  The statute should be read to mean what it says.  A review of “the” decision to institute in any case is not allowed.  General review of any agency regulation is not review of “the determination . . . whether to institute” even if the result of that review overturns the decision in any particular case.

In McNary v. Hatian Refugee Ctr. Inc., 498 US 479 (1991) the Supreme Court drew a similar distinction relating to reviewability of “special agricultural worker” (“SAW”) eligibility decisions of immigration officials under the provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.  In McNary, the Supreme Court was asked whether 8 U.S.C. § 1160(e)—which prohibits “administrative or judicial review of a determination respecting an application for adjustment of status”—deprived a district court of jurisdiction over a suit challenging agency policies and procedures.

The Supreme Court allowed the challenge.  According to the Court, “[t]he critical words in § 210(e)(1) … describe the provision as referring only to review ‘of a determination respecting an application’ for SAW status. Significantly, the statutory reference to “a determination” describes a single act rather than a group of decisions or a practice or procedure employed in making decisions.”  McNary, 498 U.S. at 491–92.  Thus the language prohibiting review indeed prohibited “direct review of individual” determinations but did not prohibit “general collateral challenges to unconstitutional practices and policies used by the agency in processing applications.”    “[H]ad Congress intended the limited review provisions of § 210(e) of the INA to encompass challenges to INS procedures and practices, it could easily have used broader statutory language” such as by prohibiting “all causes arising under any of the provisions” of the immigration program as it had done in other places.  Id. at 494. [2]

In my view, the patent law’s statutory language – “The determination . . . whether to institute” similarly indicates that § 314(d) was intended to apply to only individual determinations, not to prohibit any and all review of PTO procedures and policies relating to institution.

Second, the distinction strikes a fair balance between making sure the PTAB is complying with its statutory mandate and maintaining the efficiency of the IPR system.  Perhaps wary of a flood of appeals clogging the courts and the corresponding slow down in IPR determinations, Congress choose efficiency in section 314(d) by prohibiting an appeal relating to every single IPR institution decision.  On the other hand, allowing parties to turn to courts to check potentially problematic regulations or practices by the PTAB is an important check on that body’s power.  See, e.g., Unwired Planet, LLC v. Google Inc., 841 F.3d 1376, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (concluding that the PTAB’s definition of a “covered business method patent” exceeded the statute.”)[3]   Prohibiting challenges to each and every institution decision but allowing general challenges provides for efficient review of PTAB regulations, policies, and procedures without slowing down the whole IPR system.

Third, the distinction is consistent with most Federal Circuit decisions on the topic.  Although the distinction I suggest was not provided as the reasoning, the CAFC has notably found many PTAB regulations/policies relating to institution reviewable.  See, e.g., Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. v. Covidien LP, 812 F.3d 1023 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (hearing a challenge to 37 C.F.R. § 42.4 – “Institution of trial.  The Board institutes the trial on behalf of the Director”); Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp., 814 F.3d 1309 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (hearing a challenge to 37 C.F.R. § 42.108, titled “Institution of inter partes review”).  The cases where the Federal Circuit has found issues not to be reviewable are typically cast in case-specific ways.  See, e.g.,  Achates Reference Publ’g, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 803 F.3d 652 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (reviewing “whether Apple’s petition was time barred”); Cuozzo, 793 F.3d at 1272 (“Cuozzo argues that the PTO improperly instituted IPR on claims 10 and 14 because the PTO relied on prior art that Garmin did not identify in its petition as grounds for IPR as to those two claims.”)

Any resolution of the reviewability issue must comply with the statute, must put teeth to Congress’s embrace of efficiency, and at the same time must make sure that the rights of patent holders are adequately protected.  The approach I have outlined above, in my view, adequately balances efficiency with appropriate supervision of the PTAB.   I’m curious to see what you all think, and I look forward to reading the comments.

Note: The views views expressed here are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my firm or any clients.

___________________

[1] The CAFC left open the question of whether the APA allowed for challenges to PTAB regulations in district court in Synopsys, Inc. v. Lee, 812 F.3d 1076 (Fed. Cir. 2016).   From a practical standpoint, an APA challenge in a district court would seem to be a better option–the parties will have an opportunity to develop a fuller record removed from the facts of any particular IPR, and a district court may well provide a better first look than than the agency that promulgated the challenged regulation.

[2] NcNary follows other Supreme Court decisions distinguishing between specific challenges to a particular determination and general challenges to regulations.  See Bowen v. Michigan Acad. of Family Physicians, 476 U.S. 667, 675 (1986).

[3] For individual determinations where the PTAB clearly exceeds its statutory authority, mandamus remains available.  See, e.g., In re Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC, 793 F.3d 1268, 1274 (Fed. Cir. 2015),  aff’d sub nom. Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016).

 

Supreme Court 2017 – Patent Preview

Patent, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by Dennis Crouch

A new Supreme Court justice will likely be in place by the end of April, although the Trump edition is unlikely to substantially shake-up patent law doctrine in the short term.

The Supreme Court has decided one patent case this term. Samsung (design patent damages).  Five more cases have been granted certiorari and are scheduled to be decided by mid June 2017. These include SCA Hygiene (whether laches applies in patent cases); Life Tech (infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(1) for supplying single component); Impression Products (using patents as a personal property servitude); Sandoz (BPCIA patent dance); and last-but-not-least TC Heartland (Does the general definition of “residence” found in 28 U.S.C. 1391(c) apply to the patent venue statute 1400(b)).

Big news is that the Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari in the BPCIA dispute between Sandoz and Amgen.   The BPCIA can be thought of as the ‘Hatch Waxman of biologics’ – enacted as part of ObamaCare.   The provision offers automatic market exclusivity for twelve years for producers of pioneer biologics.   Those years of exclusivity enforced by the FDA – who will not approve a competitor’s expedited biosimilar  drug application during the exclusivity period.   The statute then provides for a process of exchanging patent and manufacturing information between a potential biosimilar producer and the pioneer – known as the patent dance.  The case here is the Court’s first chance to interpret the provisions of the law – the specific issue involves whether the pioneer (here Amgen) is required to ‘dance.’ [Andrew Williams has more @patentdocs]

A new eligibility petition by Matthew Powers in IPLearn-Focus v. Microsoft raises eligibility in a procedural form – Can a court properly find an abstract idea based only upon (1) the patent document and (2) attorney argument? (What if the only evidence presented supports eligibility?).  After reading claim 1 and 24 (24 is at issue) of U.S. Patent No. 8,538,320, you may see why the lower court bounced this. Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling without opinion under Federal Circuit Rule 36 and then denied IPLF’s petition for rehearing (again without opinion).

1. A computing system comprising:

a display;

an imaging sensor to sense a first feature of a user regarding a first volitional behavior of the user to produce a first set of measurements, the imaging sensor being detached from the first feature to sense the first feature, the first feature relating to the head of the user, and the first set of measurements including an image of the first feature, wherein the system further to sense a second feature of the user regarding a second volitional behavior of the user to produce a second set of measurements, the second feature not relating to the head of the user; and

a processor coupled to the imaging sensor and the display, the processor to:

analyze at least the first set and the second set of measurements; and determine whether to change what is to be presented by the display in view of the analysis.

24. A computing system as recited in claim 1, wherein the system capable of providing an indication regarding whether the user is paying attention to content presented by the display.

=== THE LIST===

1. 2016-2016 Decisions:

  • Design Patent Damages: Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple Inc., No 15-777 (Total profits may be based upon either the entire product sold to consumers or a component);  GVR order in parallel case Systems, Inc. v. Nordock, Inc., No. 15-978.  These cases are now back before the Federal Circuit for the job of explaining when a component

2. Petitions Granted:

3. Petitions with Invited Views of SG (CVSG): 

4. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Pending:

  • Is it a Patent Case?: Boston Scientific Corporation, et al. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC, No. 16-470 (how closely must a state court “hew” federal court patent law precedents?) (Appeal from MD State Court)
  • Anticipation/Obviousness: Google Inc., et al. v. Arendi S A.R.L., et al., No. 16-626 (can “common sense” invalidate a patent claim that includes novel elements?) (Supreme Court has requested a brief in response)
  • Civil Procedure – Final Judgment: Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. v. Rembrandt Vision Technologies, L.P., No. 16-489 (Reopening final decision under R.60).
  • Anticipation/Obviousness: Enplas Corporation v. Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd., et al., No. 16-867 (“Whether a finding of anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 must be supported by findings that each and every element of the subject patent claim is disclosed in the prior art?”)
  • Post Grant Admin: Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, et al., No. 16-712 (“Whether inter partes review … violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.”) [oilstatespetition]
  • Eligibility: IPLearn-Focus, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 16-859 (evidence necessary for finding an abstract idea)
  • Post Grant Admin: SightSound Technologies, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 16-483 (Can the Federal Circuit review USPTO decision to initiate an IPR on a ground never asserted by any party)
  • Is it a Patent Case?: Big Baboon, Inc. v. Michelle K. Lee, No. 16-496 (Appeal of APA seeking overturning of evidentiary admission findings during reexamination – heard by Federal Circuit or Regional Circuit?)
  • Laches: Medinol Ltd. v. Cordis Corporation, et al., No. 15-998 (follow-on to SCA); Endotach LLC v. Cook Medical LLC, No. 16-127 (SCA Redux); Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., et al, No. 16-202 (SCA Redux plus TM issue)
  • Eligibility and CBM: DataTreasury Corporation v. Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., No. 16-883 (I have not seen the petition yet, but underlying case challenged whether (1) case was properly classified as CBM and (2) whether PTAB properly ruled claims ineligible as abstract ideas) (Patent Nos. 5,910,988 and 6,032,137).

5. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Denied or Dismissed:
(more…)