Tag Archives: PGR

Prof. Radin’s Patent Notice and the Trouble with Plain Meaning

June 29, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, anticipation, Claim Construction, Enablement, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Written DescriptionJason Rantanen

By Jason Rantanen

Professor Margaret Radin, who recently retired from the University of Michigan Law School, is a leading scholar known for her work in property theory, contracts law, intellectual property, and internet commerce. She’s best known to my students for her articulation of a modern personhood theory of property in Property and Personhood, 34 Stan. L. Rev. 957 (1982).

In her essay Patent Notice and the Trouble with Plain Meaning forthcoming in the Boston University Law Review, Professor Radin offers her thoughts on a topic at the heart of contemporary debates in patent law: the extent to which the words of claims can operate as boundaries that provide the same degree of notice that we expect in the real property context. The abstract reads:

In their book, Patent Failure, James Bessen and Michael Meurer took the position that notice of the scope of a patentee’s property right is usefully analogous to notice conveyed by real property boundaries. In this essay I argue to the contrary that the idea that patent claim language could be rendered determinate enough to justify an analogy with physical fences or metes and bounds is illusory. Patent claims raise the question, in a way that fences do not, of how words “read on” objects in, or states of, or events in the world. I take a small detour through the language theory of Quine as backdrop to my argument that there is no such thing as plain meaning, at least not in situations involving innovative products and processes where there is money at stake. I draw on three landmark patent cases — Markman, Phillips, and Festo — to illustrate this basic point. In my concluding Postscript I bring the big picture into play. The costs of providing better notice, even if that were possible, might outweigh the gains. Plus, even if the analogy with physical boundaries and the commitment to plain meaning were not illusory, such rigidity in interpreting claims would undermine a significant feature of the patent system: the flexibility to reward breakthrough inventions proportionately to their importance.

Professor Radin’s discussion is worth a read for the eloquent way that she captures and synthesizes the raw strands floating around in current discussions about patent claims.

Viewed through the lens of my current projects, though, her essay raises deeper questions about the meaning of claim construction itself. Over the last two decades, patent law has experienced the emergence of the perception that claim construction is simply the process of interpreting the meaning of the words in the claims. From Markman to Cybor to Phillips, claim construction grew into a search for linguistic meaning. Even Teva reinforces this perception, with its focus on the role of evidence in determining the meaning of key claim terms.

But patent law’s dirty secret is that claim construction isn’t just about divining the linguistic sense of words and phrases in the claims. That’s a seemingly fine inquiry when analyzing questions such as infringement, or anticipation or even, perhaps, nonobviousness. Yet when it comes to other issues in patent law–enablement, written description and especially § 101–defining the meaning of words is less central to the analysis. To be sure, sometimes the formalized procedure of Phillips does matter in enablement. Liebel-Flarsheim and Automotive Technologies offer two examples. But for the most part, the formalized claim construction that we’re used to is absent from the Federal Circuit’s enablement, written description and § 101 determinations.

Nevertheless, claim construction of a sort is present. The court articulates something that it uses in its analysis. In the enablement and written description contexts, I’ve come to call this something a target that must be enabled or adequately described. What it really is, though, is claim construction–just not in the sense that we’ve become comfortable with.

The Federal Circuit’s opinion on Monday in Bascom v. AT&T Mobility [Download Opinion] illustrates this point. That case involved a motion to dismiss granted by the district court on the ground that the claims were invalid on § 101 grounds. (I’ll summarize the facts and holding in more detail in a subsequent post.) After assuming that the claims were directed to an abstract idea under Enfish‘s statement about “close calls” at step one of the Alice/Mayo framework, the court turned to step two: the search for an “inventive concept.” Here, the court concluded that the “inventive concept described and claimed in the []patent is the installation of a filtering tool at a specific location, remote from the end-users, with customizable filtering features specific to each end user,” a concept that the court concluded was not (on the record before it) conventional or generic. Slip Op. at 15-16. This determination–of identifying an “inventive concept”–is as much claim construction as the linguistic machinations of Phillips. Indeed, the court even refered to what it is doing as construing the claims: “Thus, construed in favor of the nonmovant–BASCOM–the claims are “more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea].” Slip Op. at 17.

Supreme Court Patent Report: End of 2015 Term

June 28, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, IPR, Marking, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court has completed its patent law business for the 2015 term and will re-open decision making in September 2016. Briefing and new filings will, however, continue throughout the summer.

Two Decisions: The Supreme Court has decided its two major patent cases – Halo/Stryker and Cuozzo. In Halo, the court re-opened the door to more treble-damage awards for willful patent infringement. The decision rejects the objective-recklessness standard of Seagate (Fed. Cir. 2007)(en banc) and instead places substantial discretion in the hands of district court judges for determining the appropriate sactions “egregious infringement behavior.” In Cuozzo, the court affirmed the Federal Circuit’s pro-PTO decision. The decisions confirms the PTO’s authority construe claims according to their broadest-reasonable-construction (BRI) even during post-issuance review proceedings and also confirms the Federal Circuit ruling that the PTO’s initiation of an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding is not appealable (even after final decision). A major caveat of this appealability issue is that the court limited its holding to run-of-the-mill IPR patent issues. The court did not determine when other issues arising from institution, such as constitutional due process challenges, might be appealable.

Both decisions are important. Halo adds at least a gentle breeze to the would-be patent infringement armada. I heard many discussions of pendulum’s swinging in the days following the case, although I would not go quite so far. Cuozzo was a full affirmance of the PTO position and will operate to continue to raise the statute and importance of the agency.

Three Pending Cases Set the Stage for Next Term: With the certiorari writ grant in Life Tech v. Promega, we now have three patent cases set for review and judgment next term. The issue in Life Tech is fairly narrow and involves export of of a component of a patented invention for combination in a would-be-infringing manner abroad. The statute requires export of a “substantial portion of the components” and the question in the case is whether export of one component can legally constitute that “substantial portion.” In the case, the component (Taq) is a commodity but is also an admitted critical aspect of the invention. Life Tech may be most interesting for those generally interested in international U.S. law (i.e., extraterritorial application of U.S. law). The other two pending cases are Samsung v. Apple (special damages in design patent cases) and SCA Hygiene (laches defense in patent cases).

None of these three pending cases are overwhelmingly important in the grand scheme of the patent system, although Samsung is fundamental to the sub-genre of design patents. This week, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Sequenom v. Ariosa – a case that some thought might serve to rationalize patent eligibility doctrine in a way that favors patentees. For now, the Mayo, Alice, _____ trilogy remains open-ended. This leaves the Federal Circuit in its nadir.

Following Cuozzo, the only AIA post-issue review cases still ongoing are Cooper and MCM. These cases raise US Constitutional issues that were expressly not decided in Cuozzo. Briefing is ongoing in MCM and one scenario is that the court will sit on Cooper and then grant/deny the pair together. A new petition was filed by Trading Technologies just before Cuozzo was released – the case focuses on a mandamus (rather than appeal) of a CBM institution decision for a patent covering a GUI tool. (Full disclosure – while in practice I represented TT and litigated the patent at issue). Of minor interest, the court issued a GVR order (Grant-Vacate-Remand) in Click-to-Call Tech. v. Oracle Corp (15-1014) with instructions to the Federal Circuit to reconsider its prior decision in light of the recently decided Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. ___ (2016). It will be interesting to see whether the patentee can develop a new hook for the Federal Circuit.

The end-of-term clean sweep leaves only two-more briefed-cases with potential for certiorari: Impression Prod. v. Lexmark Int’l. (post-sale restrictions); and Sandoz v. Amgen (BPCIA patent dance). In both cases the court called for the views of the Solicitor General (CVSG). DOJ briefs should be filed around the end of the year – although the election may shift some of the timing. SG Donald Verrilli has stepped down with former deputy Ian Gershengorn now serving as Acting SG.

The big list:

(more…)

Supreme Court Affirms Cuozzo – Siding with Patent Office on BRI and No-Appeal

June 20, 2016PatentAffirmed Without Opinion, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, IPR, PGR, Supreme Court, USPTO DirectorDennis Crouch

By Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court has upheld the AIA provision barring challenges to the Patent Office’s decision to institute inter partes review. 35 U. S. C. §314(d). In addition, Justice Breyer’s majority opinion approved of the Patent Office’s approach of applying the broadest reasonable construction (BRI) standard to interpret patent claims – finding it a “reasonable exercise of the rulemaking authority that Congress delegated to the Patent Office.”

The Court was unanimous as to the BRI standard however, Justices Alito and Sotomayor dissented from the no-appeal ruling – they would have interpreted the statute as limiting interlocutory appeals but still allowing review of the decision to institute within the context of an appellate review of the PTO’s final decision on the merits.

Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. ____ (2016).

No Appeal: The court began with the express language of the statute which expressly states that the decision of “whether to institute an inter partes review . . . shall be final and non-appealable.” The provision is plain on its face and indicates congressional purpose of delegating authority to the Patent Office. The dissenting opinion offered by Justice Alito offered to limit the statute as preventing only interlocutory appeals, but the majority rejected that interpretation as lacking textual support and being ‘unnecessary’ since the APA “already limits review to final agency decisions.”[1] The Supreme Court also analogized the PTO’s initiation decision to that of a grand jury – which is likewise unreviewable. “The grand jury gets to say— without any review, oversight, or second-guessing— whether probable cause exists to think that a person committed a crime” (quoting Kaley v. United States, 571 U. S. ___ (2014)).

If you remember, Cuozzo did not present a Constitutional challenge to the AIA regime and the majority opinion offered a glimmer of limitation in that regard. Notably, the Court suggested that challenges to the decision to institute might be appealable if based upon a Constitutional issue or some other issue outside “well beyond” the post issuance review proceeding statutory provisions.

We conclude that the first provision, though it may not bar consideration of a constitutional question, for example, does bar judicial review of the kind of mine-run claim at issue here, involving the Patent Office’s decision to institute inter partes review.

The opinion here includes a number of nuances that will be interesting to tease-out, but the bottom line is that IPR remains a powerful tool for challenging patents.

Claim Construction during Inter Partes Review: Regarding the Broadest-Reasonable-Interpretation being applied to patent claims, the court was unanimous in siding with the USPTO. The court began by noting that Congress granted rulemaking authority to the USPTO to create regulations governing inter partes review and that this authority empowered the USPTO to enact rules both substantive and procedural that are reasonable in light of the statutory text. Since the statute was “not unambiguous” as to the appropriate claim construction standard, and therefore that the USPTO must be given leeway in determining its administrative approach.

Cuozzo had argued that IPR proceedings were like trials in many ways and therefore the claim construction should be parallel to that of trial proceedings. The Supreme Court rejected that analogy – finding that IPR proceedings serve a purpose much broader than merely “helping resolve concrete patent-related disputes among parties.”

[I]nter partes review helps protect the public’s “paramount interest in seeing that patent monopolies . . . are kept within their legitimate scope.” Precision Instrument Mfg. Co. v. Automotive Maintenance Machinery Co., 324 U. S. 806 (1945); see H. R. Rep., at 39–40 (Inter partes review is an “efficient system for challenging patents that should not have issued”).

In finding BRI reasonable, the court followed this public-interest pathway and found that BRI helps to provide stronger bounds on patent scope:

We conclude that the regulation represents a reasonable exercise of the rulemaking authority that Congress delegated to the Patent Office. For one thing, construing a patent claim according to its broadest reasonable construction helps to protect the public. A reasonable, yet unlawfully broad claim might discourage the use of the invention by a member of the public. Because an examiner’s (or reexaminer’s) use of the broadest reasonable construction standard increases the possibility that the examiner will find the claim too broad (and deny it), use of that standard encourages the applicant to draft narrowly. This helps ensure precision while avoiding overly broad claims, and thereby helps prevent a patent from tying up too much knowledge, while helping members of the public draw useful information from the disclosed invention and better understand the lawful limits of the claim. See §112(a); Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 572 U. S. ___ (2014).

Affirmed.

Most of the IPR-related petitions for writ of certiorari that are still pending are likely to fall-away at this point. However, the major caveats in the majority opinion (noted above) offer some light for both Cooper v. Lee and MCM v. HP since those petitions challeng the system on US Constitutional grounds.

USPTO Director Michelle Lee offered the following statement in reaction to the Cuozzo decision:

The USPTO appreciates the Supreme Court’s decision which will allow the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to maintain its vital mission of effectively and efficiently resolving patentability disputes while providing faster, less expensive alternatives to district court litigation.

Director Lee will likely step-down as the Obama Administration moves out. A portion of her legacy will remain as the named respondent.

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[1] 5 U. S. C. §704

Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down: Jericho v. Axiomatics at the Supreme Court

June 15, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, Affirmed Without Opinion, AIA Trials, Enablement, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme CourtDennis Crouch

In a new petition for writ of certiorari, Jericho Systems has asked the Supreme Court to review its abstract idea test:

Whether, under this Court’s precedent in Alice Corp. Party Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012), a patent may be invalidated as an “abstract idea” under 35 U.S.C. § 101 when it claims a specific implementation and does not preempt other uses of the abstract idea.

Jericho Systems Corp v. Axiomatics – Petition for Certiorari.

The district court ended the case with a judgment on the pleadings – finding that the asserted claims of Jericho’s Patent No. 8,560,836 lacked eligibility under Alice and Mayo (focusing on claim 1 as axiomatic).

Using the ‘gist analysis’, the district court found that:

[T]he gist of the claim involves a user entering a request for access, looking up the rule for access, determining what information is needed to apply the rule, obtaining that information, and then applying the information to the rule to make a decision.

This is an abstract idea. The abstract idea being that people who meet certain requirements are allowed to do certain things. This is like Axiomatic’s example of making a determination if somebody is old enough to buy an R rated movie ticket.

Thus, finding that the claim encompasses an abstract idea, the district court moved to Step 2 of the Alice/Mayo analysis – and again sided with the defendant:

As al ready stated, [the claimed invention simply] uses standard computing processes to implement an idea unrelated to computer technology. It does not change [sic] way a computer functions or the way that the internet operates.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed in a R.36 judgment without opinion. On this point, the petition cites Jason Rantanen’s recent post indicating that around 50% of Federal Circuit decisions are being resolved without opinion. Jason Rantanen, Data on Federal Circuit Appeals and Decisions, PATENTLY-O (June 2, 2016).

A grant of certiorari in this case would serve as a salutary reminder to the Federal Circuit about the appropriate use of one-word affirmances—which currently resolve over 50 percent of that court’s cases. Rantanen, supra (showing that the percentage of Rule 36 opinions in appeals from district courts has increased from 21 percent to 43 percent in less than a decade). If the Federal Circuit is content to allow district court opinions to effectively substitute for its own opinions at such a high rate, that practice should not be permitted to “cert proof ” issues that are otherwise cleanly presented and worthy of this Court’s review. Cf. Philip P. Mann, When the going gets tough . . . Rule 36!, IP Litigation Blog (Jan. 14, 2016) (arguing that the Federal Circuit relies on summary affirmance under Rule 36 to “sidestep difficult issues on appeal and simply affirm”).

One issue that the district court (and obviously the Federal Circuit) failed to address was that of preemption – what is the relevance of the fact that substantial, practical, an and non-infringing applications of the given abstract idea are available and not covered by the patent. Petitioner argues that issue is critical to the analysis. “[T]he lower courts regularly decline any discussion of preemption in favor of rote analysis of patent language at so high a level of generality that the claim language is rendered all but meaningless. This leads to the untenable result that patents—such as the one here—that do not preempt other uses of the alleged “abstract idea” at issue are nevertheless held to violate Alice.”

Supreme Court Patent Update: 271(e) Safe Harbor

June 3, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, Marking, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Look for opinions in Halo/Stryker and Cuozzo by the end June 2016.

Post Grant Admin: While we await Cuozzo, a set of follow-on cases continue to pile-up. My speculation is that the Supreme Court will delay any decision in those cases until it finalizes the outcome of Cuozzo. With a host of new friend-of-the-court briefs and interesting constitutional questions, MCM v. HP is perhaps best positioned for certiorari. Additional pending cases include Versata v. SAP (scope of CBM review); Cooper v. Lee (whether IPRs violate Separation of Powers); Click-to-Call Tech, LP v. Oracle Corp., (Same questions as Cuozzo and now-dismissed Achates v. Apple); GEA Process Engineering, Inc. v. Steuben Foods, Inc. (Flip-side of Cuozzo: Appeal when PTAB exceeds its authority by terminating an instituted IPR proceeding?); Interval Licensing LLC v. Lee (Same as Cuozzo); and Stephenson v. Game Show Network, LLC (Same as Cuozzo)

Design Patent Damages: Samsung has filed its opening merits briefs in the design patent damages case against Apple. Design patent infringement leads to profit disgorgment, but the question is what profits? [More from Patently-O].

Versus Cisco: There are a couple of newly filed petitions. Interestingly, both filed by Michael Heim’s firm with Miranda Jones on both briefs representing plaintiff-petitioners. In both cases Cisco is respondent.

CSIRO v. CISCO (fact-law divide in proving infringement damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284).
COMMIL v. CISCO (appellate disregard of factual evidence).

Of course, Commil was the subject to a 2015 Supreme Court decision that rejected the Federal Circuit’s original opinion favoring Cisco. On remand, the Federal Circuit completely changed its decision but again sided with Cisco and rejected the jury verdict — holding “that substantial evidence does not support the jury’s finding that Cisco’s devices, when used, perform the “running” step of the asserted claims.”

Safe Harbor for Federal Submissions: In the newly filed Amphastar Pharma case, the Supreme Court has already requested a response from Momenta. The question presented focuses on the safe-harbor provision of 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1) and asks: Whether the safe harbor protects a generic drug manufacturer’s bioequivalence testing that is performed only as a condition of maintaining FDA approval and is documented in records that must be submitted to the FDA upon request. The federal circuit held that Amphastar’s activity in this case was not protected by the safe harbor because it involved information “routinely reported” to the FDA post-approval. [Amphastar Petition]

The big list:

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Wegner’s Top Ten Pending Patent Cases

May 26, 2016PatentAIA Trials, Claim Construction, Damages, PGRDennis Crouch

Hal Wegner has updated his top-ten list of pending cases:

Impression Products v. Lexmark (cert petition pending) (post-sale and international exhaustion)
Sequenom v. Ariosa Diagnostics (cert petition pending) (patent eligibility)
Samsung v. Apple (cert granted) (design patent damages)
Cuozzo Speed v. Lee (awaiting Supreme Court decision) (claim construction at the PTAB)
Halo Electronics v. Pulse and Stryker v. Zimmer (awaiting Supreme Court decision) (requirements to prove willful infringement)
SCA Hygiene v. First Quality Baby Prods (cert granted) (when does laches apply in patent cases)
Life v. Promega (cert petition pending) (active inducement for export of component)
Cooper v. Lee (cert petition pending) (direct challenge to PTAB administrative review)
MCM Portfolio v. Hewlett-Packard (cert petition pending) (direct challenge to PTAB administrative review)
Helsinn Healthcare v. Teva Pharm. (Federal Circuit case) (whether Metallizing Engineering was overruled by statute – i.e., what is the prior art impact of secret pre-filing commercialization by patentee).

Read Wegner’s Writings published by the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association. A full list of pending Supreme Court patent cases is available on Patently-O.

Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases 2016 (May 18 Update)

May 18, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, Marking, obviousness, Personal Jurisdiction, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, Trade Secrets, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

It is now time to begin looking for an opinion in the Halo/Stryker regarding whether the Federal Circuit’s test for willful infringement is too rigid. Those cases were argued in February 2016. We can also expect a decision in Cuozzo prior to the end June 2016.

Supplying Components Abroad: The Solicitor General has finally filed its brief in Life Tech v. Promega. The brief supports certiorari — but only for one of the two questions presented: namely,

whether a supplier can be held liable for providing ‘all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention’ from the United States when the supplier ships for combination abroad only a single commodity component of a multi-component invention

The patent in the case involves a DNA amplification kit used for personal identification. And, although the allegedly infringing kids were made in the UK, one commodity-component (the Taq polymerase) was supplied from the U.S. Focusing on the language of the statute, the Solicitor Generals argues that liability for export of a single component of a multi-component invention “is contrary to Section 271(f)’s text and structure, and it is inconsistent with the presumption against extraterritoriality.” Separately, the brief argues that the Federal Circuit was correct in its holding that a party can actively induce itself – thus 271(f)(1) inducement does not require a third party to be induced. [USPromega CVSG Petition].

Post Grant Admin: I previously discussed GEA Process Engineering. That case involves the Flip-side of Cuozzo and asks whether an appeal can follow when the PTAB exceeds its authority by terminating an already instituted IPR proceeding? The respondent (Steuben Foods) had previously waived its right to respond, but the Supreme Court has now requested a response. That move makes certiorari more likely, but the result will depend upon the outcome in Cuozzo.

Attorney Fees: Newegg Inc. v. MacroSolve, Inc., No. 15-1369. Professor Mark Lemley’s brief on behalf of Newegg asks that the attorney-fee framework of Octane Fitness actually be implemented. [NewEggPetition]. Although Octane Fitness gives district courts discretion in determining whether to award fees, Newegg argues that the E.D. Texas court improperly applied “a special, heightened burden of proof.” The Supreme Court is currently considering the Kirtsaeng attorney fee case for copyright law. That decision may shed some light on the patent cases as well.

A new petition in Automotive Body Parts, No. 15-1314, focuses on a question of civil procedure regarding a clerk’s transfer of a design patent case out of E.D.Tx in a manner that violated the local rules. Here, the clerk transferred the case immediately after the judge ordered transfer even though the local rules call for a 21 day delay. The case is rising through a petition for mandamus, but my view is that the petition fails to show why transfer is so harmful (except for the reality that patent plaintiffs are usually given more respect in E.D.Tx.).

The court was scheduled to discuss Cooper v. Lee at its May 12 conference. No action was taken following that conference – lightly suggesting to me that the court is holding judgment until it resolves Cuozzo. Apart from the AIA Trial challenges, most potential life changing case on the docket for patent attorneys is Cubist v. Hospira that focuses on the role of secondary indicia of non-obviousness. As with most Supreme Court patent cases over the past decade, Cubist argues that the Federal Circuit’s rules are too restrictive and should instead follow a looser factor-based analysis when considering the issue. In the next couple of weeks, the court will consider the Cubist petition as well as that of Dow v. NOVA (appellate review standard); Vehicle Intelligence (abstract idea); and WesternGeco (damages calculation for 271(f) infringement by exporting components).

Secret Offers to Sell: The Federal Circuit is not slowing down its patent jurisprudence in any way – except for the rash of R.36 affirmances. An important case is Helsinn that focuses on whether the AIA abrogated the rule in Metallizing Engineering.

The big list: (more…)

By The Numbers: Is the PTO Underreporting the Rate They Institute IPRs and CBMs?

May 16, 2016PatentAIA Trials, IPR, obviousness, PGRDennis Crouch

Guest post by Michael E. Sander, Founder and CEO of Docket Alarm, Inc.

The Patent Office routinely publishes statistics on IPR and CBM proceedings, but their methodology suggests that the petition institution rate is lower than it really is.

Inter partes review and covered business method review have undoubtedly changed patent litigation. No patent assertion campaign or defense strategy is complete without considering the implications of these AIA procedures.

The Patent Office publishes statistics on these new AIA trials roughly once a month. Practitioners can easily see how many petitions are filed in various technology areas, as well as how often claims survive or are canceled. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this visual and easy-to-read resource gives stakeholders a quick sense of how the new tribunal is affecting patent law.

But as Mark Twain once said, “[f]acts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.” In publishing these statistics, the PTO has made choices in methodology that may underreport the institution rate of IPR and CBM proceedings.

Background on AIA Trial Procedure

For those unfamiliar with PTAB trial practice, a PTAB proceeding starts with a petitioner filing a petition for inter partes review or covered business method review.[1] See Figure 1 (below). The petition lays out reasons why a claim or set of claims is invalid.

About six months[2] after a petition is filed, the PTAB issues an Institution Decision. See 35 U.S.C. 314(b). In the Institution Decision, the PTAB decides whether or not “there is a reasonable likelihood that the petitioner would prevail with respect to at least 1 of the claims challenged in the petition.” See 35 U.S.C. 314(a). If the PTAB decides that the petitioner is unlikely to prevail, the proceeding is terminated, and the case is disposed of.

If the PTAB determines that the petitioner may prevail, a trial is instituted. During this stage, evidence and testimony is presented, along with additional briefing. Within one year of institution, the PTAB issues a Final Written Decision, in which they decide whether or not claims should be canceled. See 35 U.S.C. 316(a)(11).

Figure 1: IPR and CBM Process

Statistics on AIA Trial Proceedings

The PTO has been regularly publishing statistics on a variety of aspects of AIA proceedings. One important piece of information to patent owners and petitioners alike is the average rate in which the PTAB institutes a petition for IPR or CBM, i.e., the Institution Rate. Fortunately, the Patent Office publishes exactly these figures.

Depicted in Figure 2 below is one page from the PTO’s published statistics. Their statistics depict a snapshot of every IPR petition filed as of February 29, 2016. The PTO depicts the number of IPR petitions that have proceeded to each stage, including whether a proceeding was instituted or not, whether the case settled, and whether the instituted proceeding resulted in all instituted claims being canceled, some claims canceled, or no claims canceled.

Figure 2: PTAB Statistics
http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2016-2-29%20PTAB.pdf at 9

This figure is deceptively simple. The figure states that out of 2731 total petitions, 1372 trials were not instituted while 1359 petitions were instituted. Of the non-instituted cases, 540 were terminated due to non-substantive reasons.

Therefore, of the institution decisions decided on the merits, the PTAB’s reported Petition Institution rate is 62%.[3]

When I first studied the PTO’s chart and saw that the Petition Institution rate was 62%, I was puzzled. Docket Alarm, compiles statistics like these and more, and found that petitions were instituted in 71% percent of proceedings. See Figure 3. This nearly 10-point difference was too large to be explained.

As it turns out, deriving the overall institution rate from the chart provided by the PTO can be misleading.

Figure 3: Docket Alarm Statistics
https://www.docketalarm.com/analytics/PTAB/#q=&v=overview

The PTO’s Statistics Methodology

The understand why the PTO’s reported Institution Rate is lower than expected, one must understand the PTO’s methodology, and the implications of the dataset that they used. Right at the top of the page, their figure states that only proceedings “Completed To Date” are considered in their statistics. See Figure 2. This seemingly benign statement has profound implications on the result: If a trial is not instituted, it is included in their statistics immediately when the institution decision is published. However, if a trial is instituted, the decision will not be included in the dataset until the case is disposed, up to a year later. Petition denials are necessarily included at an earlier point in time than the decisions to institute. This methodology skews the reported institution rate downward, suggesting that the PTAB is instituting far fewer trials than they are.

The effect is significant, consider the following hypothetical. Suppose PTAB judges flip a coin to determine whether to institute: 50% of the time they decide to institute, and 50% of the time they decide to not institute. Further suppose in our hypo that on January 1, 2013, 100 petitions are filed, and no further petitions are filed for the rest of the year.[4]

Given this hypothetical, one would assume that the reported Institution Rate should be 50%, but let’s see how it plays out.

After the first 6 months, on July 1, 2013, the PTAB flips a hundred coins, and 50 petitions are instituted, while 50 are denied. The proceedings that are not instituted are terminated. The instituted proceedings continue onwards. Using the PTO’s methodology, only the denied petitions are included in the statistics.

Using the PTO’s methodology in the hypothetical above, the institution rate would be 0%. The 50 petitions that were denied are included in their statistics, while the 50 instituted decisions are not because they are not completed.

Taking the hypothetical to the following year, on Jan. 1, 2014, 100 additional petitions are filed. Again, on July 1, 2014, 50 petitions are instituted and 50 denied. In addition, the 50 instituted petitions that were filed on Jan. 1, 2013, come to completion. Using the PTO’s methodology, the institution rate calculated in the second year would be 25%, closer to reality but still a far cry from the “real” institution rate of 50%.

One can continue this hypothetical forward, and while the gap between the reported rate and reality narrows, after five years, the difference between what is reported and the expected institution rate is still 10%. See Table 1 (below).

Table 1: Calculating the Institution Rate Using PTO’s Methodology on Hypothetical Data
Table1

Obviously, Administrative Patent Judges do not flip a coin to decide whether to institute, more than 100 petitions are filed in a year, and petitions are not all filed on the first of the year. However, the basic point holds true: if one only includes “completed” cases in their statistics, non-instituted cases will be over-counted, and instituted cases will be proportionally under-counted.

Conclusion

Because the PTO clearly states at the top of the chart that they are only including completed cases, technically, their statistics are not incorrect. However, as shown above, their methodology can lead one who is not bringing a critical eye to the statistics to believe that the Institution Rate is 10% lower than it actually is. Mark Twain would feel right at home.

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[1] There are several other types of AIA trial proceedings, such as Post Grant Review and Derivation proceedings, but they are not nearly as popular as IPRs and CBMs.

[2] Six months is typical, but it can be earlier at the discretion of the court, or later if the petition is not quickly accorded a filing date.

[3] This value is calculated as:

Total Trials Instituted / (Total Petitions – Petitions Non-Substantively Terminated)
= 1359 / (2731 – 540)

= 62.03%

[4] We additionally assume that no parties settle, and that petitions are afforded a filing date on the same day they are filed. These assumptions are immaterial to the substantive point, but make the numbers easier to deal with.

Precedent and Process in the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 10, 2016PatentAIA Trials, anticipation, Claim Construction, IPR, PGR, USPTO DirectorDennis Crouch

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

On May 9, the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) designated five opinions as “precedential”—the most significant of the four labels that the agency attaches to its administrative decisions. This action is itself a milestone, as the USPTO has designated only three other opinions as precedential over the last 22 months. So this is a useful moment to examine the process by which PTAB opinions become precedential and to consider what this new body of administrative precedent means for the patent validity review procedures created by the AIA.

What the Current Precedential Opinions Say

The eight PTAB precedential opinions themselves are as follow:

Designated as Precedential in May 2016

Garmin Int’l v. Cuozzo Speed Techs LLC, IPR2012-00001, Paper 26 (Mar. 5, 2013). Discusses the distinct standards for “routine” and “additional” discovery requests in inter partes review, and explains the factors for evaluating motions for additional discovery.
Bloomberg, Inc. v. Markets-Alert Pty, Ltd., CBM2013-00005, Paper 32 (May 29, 2013). Compares the more lenient “good cause” standard for additional discovery in covered business method review (as well as post-grant review) with the slightly stricter “interests of justice” standard in inter partes review, and explains the factors for evaluating motions for additional discovery in CBM review.
Oracle Corp. v. Click-to-Call Techs, LP, IPR2013-00312, Paper 26 (Oct. 30, 2013) (precedential only as to Section III.A). Explains that the “served with a complaint” requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) does not trigger the one-year bar for filing an IPR petition where the entire complaint in the prior civil action was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.
MasterImage 3D, Inc. v. RealD Inc., IPR2015-00040, Paper 42 (July 15, 2015). Clarifies the patent owner’s burden to demonstrate its entitlement to substitute claims that are patentable over the relevant prior art, elaborating on Idle Free Systems, Inc. v. Bergstrom, Inc., IPR2012-00027 (June 11, 2013) (Paper 26) (informative).
Lumentum Holdings, Inc. v. Capella Photonics, Inc., IPR2015-00739 (Paper 38) (Mar. 4, 2016). Explains that the requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 312(a)(2) to identify all real parties in interest is not jurisdictional, so that a failure to comply neither deprives the PTAB of authority to hear the case nor forbids the PTAB to allow the failure to be rectified.

Designated as Precedential in January 2016

LG Electronics, Inc. v. Mondis Tech Ltd., IPR2015-00937, Paper 8 (Sept. 17, 2015). Explains that the “served with a complaint” requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) triggers the one-year bar for filing an IPR petition based on the earlier of two complaints and that a dismissed complaint may still trigger the § 315(b) bar if it was dismissed partially with prejudice and partially without.
Westlake Services, LLC v. Credit Acceptance Corp., CBM2014-00176, Paper 28 (May 14, 2015). Explains that the CBM estoppel provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 325(e)(1) barring further proceedings before the USPTO apply on a claim-by-claim basis, so that a new petition for CBM review is not necessarily barred if it addresses no claims that were the subject of a prior final written decision.

Designated as Precedential in July 2014

SecureBuy LLC v. CardinalCommerce Corp., CBM 2014-00035, Paper 12 (Apr. 25, 2014). Applies the plain language of 35 U.S.C. § 325(a)(1) to bar a petition for CBM review where the petitioner (or its real party in interest) previously “filed a civil action challenging the validity of a claim in the patent.”

What the PTAB Designations Mean

PTAB opinions come in four varieties—until recently, it was three—and each serves a different function. The most difficult to designate and so the rarest are precedential opinions, which are binding in all future cases before the PTAB unless and until they are superseded by later binding authority. Two particularly strong motivations for designating an opinion as precedential is to resolve a conflict among multiple PTAB decisions and to address novel questions.

By contrast, the largest and least significant set of opinions are routine; all opinions are routine by default, and some further action is necessary to elevate an opinion’s status. Routine opinions are still binding as to the particular case, but should generally not be cited as persuasive authority except as to their particular facts.

In the middle are two more types of non-binding opinions: informative and representative. Informative opinions articulate the PTAB’s norms on recurring issues and offer guidance both on issues of first impression and on PTAB rules and practices. Representative opinions offer a sample of typical decisional outcomes on a given matter. Until recently, the only middle category was informative opinions, which presented guidance on the rules and practices of the PTAB, representative samples of opinion types, or representative samples of outcomes. On September 22, 2014, the PTAB created a new category for representative opinions—ranked below informative opinions.

In short, representative opinions are a descriptive curation of routine opinions. Informative opinions go beyond merely surveying an issue and synthesize some further normative guidance. Precedential opinions go further still and make the synthesis binding.

How the PTAB Designates Opinions

The process for designating opinions resides in the PTAB’s Standard Operating Procedure No. 2 (Rev. 9, Sept. 22, 2014). Any member of the PTAB may nominate an opinion to be designated as representative, informative, or precedential. This includes the Director and Deputy Director of the USPTO and the Commissioners for Patents and Trademarks as ex officio members. Interested parties and members of the public may nominate an opinion within 60 days of its issuance to be designated as precedential. Nominations are received and referred by the Chief Judge of the PTAB.

Upon a nomination to make an opinion precedential, members of the PTAB discuss the proposal for a prescribed period (usually 10 business days) and then vote. Approval by a majority sends the opinion to the Director, whose approval is also necessary. Upon approval by the Director, the opinion is designated as precedential and published (with appropriate notice and opportunity for written objection where confidentiality applies under 37 C.F.R. § 1.14).

For opinions already designated as precedential, any member of the PTAB may suggest that later authority has overcome the opinion’s precedential value. If first the Chief Judge and then the Director both agree, then the opinion loses its precedential force, and a notice of the change is posted in its place among the list of precedential PTAB opinions.

The Chief Judge of the PTAB may designate any opinion as informative or representative so long as it is not already precedential.

Why the PTAB’s Precedents (and Process) Matter

Both the content of the PTAB’s body of precedential opinions and the PTAB’s process have important implications for ex post administrative review of patent validity.

As to content, it is telling that all eight precedential opinions pertain to the procedural structure of IPR and CBM proceedings, particularly insofar as that procedural structure interacts with the structure of patent litigation in the federal courts. The separation of patent powers between the executive and the judiciary is now before the Supreme Court in multiple cases, and this body of precedential opinions should be understood as a signal of the USPTO’s strong interest in shoring up its regime of administrative adjudication.

The opinions in SecureBuy, LG Electronics, and Oracle address when earlier civil actions do and do not bar a petition for PTAB review. Westlake Services addresses estoppel in future CBM review, and there is good reason to expect that the same reasoning will apply to the parallel statutory language that governs IPR estoppel. Lumentum Holdings rejects a jurisdictional view of certain procedural requirements, preserving the PTAB’s broad authority to choose its cases. MasterImage 3D frames a patent owner’s ability to amend claims during review. And Bloomberg and Garmin Int’l address limits on trial-type discovery in both the IPR and the CBM/PGR contexts. Making these procedural and structural decisions into binding authority is, by definition, intended to bring uniformity to the PTAB’s large and increasing body of case law.

The need for such uniformity is particularly strong right now. The Supreme Court in Cuozzo v. Lee is evaluating whether the PTAB’s authority in instituting petitions is truly nonreviewable. The Court in Cuozzo is also considering whether the PTAB’s claim construction standard can properly remain unaligned with federal court standards, a question that turns significantly on the ability of patent owners to amend their claims during review. The trial-like nature of PTAB proceedings is more generally under attack as to whether IPR and CBM review violate the separation of powers doctrine and the Seventh Amendment jury trial right, as the recent cert petition in MCM Portfolio LLC, Petitioner v. Hewlett-Packard Company (No. 15-1330) suggests. In this environment of Supreme Court scrutiny, a persuasive argument that PTAB practice is proceeding with institutional coherence may do much to influence the USPTO’s autonomy in administering the validity and scope of patent rights.

Automatic Assignment of Future Inventions: A Serious Error of Federal Law that Requires Supreme Court Review

May 8, 2016PatentAIA Trials, Claim Construction, Federal Circuit En Banc, First to Invent, Licenses, obviousness, PGR, Supreme Court, USPTO DirectorDennis Crouch

Guest post by Dr. Shubha Ghosh, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and Director of the Technology Commercialization Law Program at Syracuse University College of Law

In Stanford v Roche, 563 U.S. 776 (2011), the Supreme Court ruled that the Bayh-Dole Act did not create special rules of patent ownership for universities and other recipients of federal research funding. Traditional rules of inventor ownership and assignment, developed for for-profit entities applied to research institutes. Nothing in the language of the Bayh-Dole changed the basic rules and created a statutory automatic assignment (one analogous to work made for hire under the Copyright Act).

But what are the traditional rules for patent assignment? One issue the majority ignored in Stanford is the future interest assignment rule created by the Federal Circuit in Filmtec Corp. v. Allied Signal, 939 F.2d 1568 (Fed. Cir. 1991). By containing the phrase “hereby assigns,” the Federal Circuit stated in Filmtec, an assignment would have priority over another that only contained the word “assigns.” An assignor stating that he “assigns” a future interest is simply conveying a promise to assign in the future. However, the magic phrase “hereby assigns” is a present assignment of a future interest. Stanford University’s failure to include the word “hereby” in its assignment agreement lost patent rights to Roche, a competing assignee that showed the wisdom to include the word “hereby” in its agreement.

Justices Breyer and Ginsburg in dissent sharply criticized the Filmtec rule of “automatic assignment” through agreement in the Stanford case. This sentiment was echoed in Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence. All three justices, however, recognized that the assignment interpretation issue was not properly before the Court. Dr. Alexander Shukh, a computer hardware engineer, signed an assignment to his former employer Seagate. The assignment contained the “hereby” language sanctioned by the Filmtec decision. Seagate, and the Federal Circuit, reads the hereby language as creating an automatic assignment of Shukh’s rights to his inventions and resulting patents. The Shukh decision does not involve priority of assignments and goes beyond the Filmtec decision criticized by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor. Under Shukh, the magic words “ hereby assigns” extinguishes all rights of employees in their inventions.

The Court should grant Shukh’s certiori petition. This post demonstrates that there is a serious error of federal law that requires Supreme Court review. It also shows how the Court might correct the misapplication of federal law.

The Federal Circuit created the rule of automatic assignment through agreement without any basis in the Patent Act or in the common law of assignment. Acting from its institutional law as patent law expert, the Federal Circuit seemingly adopted the Filmtec rule as one of patent assignment. But, as Professor Ted Hagelin pointed out in a 2013 article in the AIPLA Law Quarterly, the automatic assignment rule has no foundation in the Patent Act. Section 261 speaks to writing requirements and priority rules arising from filing. There is no mention of the magic word “hereby” as a marker between promises to assign in the future and present assignments of future interests. Professor Hagelin recommended that Congress correct the error by amending Section 261.

But the Federal Circuit’s error is deeper than one of statutory misconstruction. Its decision confuses the relationship between patent law and contract law. The error is in the same category as the controversy over the conditional sale doctrine, a court created rule from Mallinckrodt v. Medipart, 976 F.2d 700 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In Mallinckrodt, the Federal Circuit examined a patent owner’s power to impose conditions on its grant of rights to a licensee. Through announcing the conditional sale doctrine, the Federal Circuit ruled that a violation of such conditions constituted patent infringement rather than contract breach. By so ruling, the Federal Circuit expanded its own jurisdiction by transforming questions of state contract law into those of patent law. A similar move occurs in Filmtec.

The usurpation of contract law by patent law is the subject of my 2014 article in the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society. My argument in that paper is grounded, in part, in Judge Pauline Newman’s criticism of Filmtec in her dissent from denial of en banc review in Abraxis v. Navinta. 672 F.2d 1239 (Fed. Cir. 2011). According to Justice Newman, patent assignments are a matter of contract law, which is in the jurisdiction of the states. Therefore, the Federal Circuit should look more closely at state law in deciding cases about patent assignments.

The judge’s point is particularly salient when one remembers that the Federal Circuit was created as an expert patent court. It was given jurisdiction to hear some non-patent matters when these matters are related to patent cases. Patent assignments are one obvious example of when the Federal Circuit has jurisdiction to consider state matters. But, as Judge Newman points out, jurisdiction to hear a case does not mean authority to create new law, as the Federal Circuit arguably did in Filmtec and in Stanford. Instead, the Federal Circuit should look to other authorities to address non-patent law matters. For contract law matters, what state courts and legislatures have said about assignments generally would be relevant. Furthermore, state law provides a stable and predictable source of authority for actors engaged in the business practice of negotiating patent assignments and other contracts.

The core problem is that the court has ignored the Erie doctrine. Under the Supreme Court’s 1937 decision in Erie v. Tompkins, a federal court ruling on a matter of state law under its diversity jurisdiction must apply the law of the state from which the dispute arose. Which state law to apply is a matter of choice of law principles. What the federal court cannot do is create its own federal common law in lieu of the state statutory or common law. As the Court affirmed in Butner v. United States, 440 U.S. 48 (1979), the Erie doctrine applies to a court’s supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims attendant to a federal question. By creating its own federal common law of contracts, the Federal Circuit reveals a fundamental error in its understanding of the federal court system.

State law offers a different analysis of patent assignments from what the Federal Circuit adopts. Justice Breyer, in his Stanford dissent, cited a treatise on patent law by George Ticknor Curtis from 1873 that discusses patent assignments. Curtis addresses how state law treats assignments and cites a Massachusetts case from 1841 dealing with patent assignments. Relevant to the issues in Stanford, the assignment involved the present assignment of an invention that had not been made yet. The court analyzed the assignment as it would any contract, identifying the terms of the document as a key to the expectations of the parties. State law precedents perhaps offer an alternative to the questionable Federal Circuit jurisprudence, at least with respect to patent assignments.

One related area in state law is that of security interests, a part of debtor-creditor law. In entering into credit agreements, creditors ask for security in the form of collateral for a loan. The collateral may be a legal interest that is not in existence at the time of the loan. An example would be the future sales or proceeds from a debtor’s business. Another example would be inventory remaining at the end of an accounting period. These future interests are analogous to the future inventions or patents that I have been discussing. Rights can be claimed in these properties that are nonexistent at the time of the contract formation between creditor and debtor.

Security interests provide the most common situation in which conflicting obligations arise. Debtors often take multiple mortgages, hypothetic future proceeds to multiple creditors, and take multiple loans out on the same collateral. As long as the value of the collateral can cover all the debts, then there is no problem in general. However, if not all creditors can be satisfied, priority rules are necessary. In the case of future interests, the law does not fall back on simple rules like first in time because there are multiple interests involved. A creditor does not want to run the risk of not receiving any return on the debt. The legal rules of priority allow the creditor to investigate the collateral and through such due diligence identify competing claimants on the collateral. Priority rules, consequently, depend not only on the timing of the contract, but also on recording and notice requirements.

The case of conflicting patent assignments bears some similarity to the law on intangible future interests in creditor-debtor law. Both entail rights in property that has yet to come into being. The main lesson from creditor-debtor law, which is largely a matter of state law, is that many interests are implicated and therefore simple rules are not satisfactory. The Federal Circuit has arguably adopted too simple and misguided a rule in the Filmtec. The Supreme Court has confounded the error in the Stanford decision by ignoring the issue of automatic assignments. One way to correct course is by granting Shukh’s petition for certiori and restore the proper balance between federal patent law and state commercial law.

The Recent Federal Circuit Decision in Acorda Therapeutics v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals May Not be the Last Word on Personal Jurisdiction in ANDA Cases

May 3, 2016PatentAffirmed Without Opinion, AIA Trials, Federal Circuit En Banc, Personal Jurisdiction, PGRDennis Crouch

Guest Post By: Paul Dietze and Mini Kapoor, Haynes and Boone, LLP[1]

On March 18, 2016, the Federal Circuit held that Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Mylan”), a generic drug manufacturer, was subject to specific personal jurisdiction in Delaware because Mylan had filed an abbreviated new drug application (“ANDA”) and “contemplate[d] plans to engage in marketing of the proposed generic drugs” in the state.[2] The ruling affirmed two different decisions by judges in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware that Mylan was subject to specific jurisdiction in Delaware.[3] However, as noted below, it looks like Mylan intends to seek panel or en banc rehearing and possibly pursue a petition for certiorari if the Federal Circuit does not grant the rehearing or re-hears the case and continues to find personal jurisdiction.

I. Procedural Posture of the Cases

Mylan filed two separate ANDAs with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) seeking permission to market generic versions of unrelated pharmaceutical products marketed by Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. and AstraZeneca AB under the statutory scheme outlined in the Hatch-Waxman Act (the “Act”). As permitted under the Act, Mylan certified that the patents of the brand name drug companies listed in the FDA’s Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations (“the Orange Book”) were either invalid or would not be infringed by Mylan’s marketing of its proposed generic versions of the drugs. Each certification is deemed an artificial act of infringement under the Act, and permits the brand name drug companies to sue the generic drug company. Acorda and AstraZeneca sued Mylan for patent infringement in separate lawsuits filed in Delaware. Mylan moved to dismiss in both cases, arguing that it was not subject to either general or specific personal jurisdiction.[4]

Specifically, Mylan, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman,[5] argued that it was not subject to general jurisdiction in Delaware because it did not have contacts with Delaware that were so continuous “as to render it essentially at home in the forum state,” and was not subject to specific jurisdiction because it did not satisfy the minimum contacts requirement.[6] Both district court decisions held that Mylan was subject to specific jurisdiction in Delaware.[7] The district court decisions, however, differed as to whether or not Mylan was subject to general jurisdiction in Delaware.

II. The Opinion

On appeal, the majority opinion of the Federal Circuit panel affirmed specific jurisdiction without addressing general jurisdiction.[8] The panel identified Mylan’s ANDA filings as “formal acts that reliably indicate plans to engage in marketing of the proposed generic drugs” and held the particular actions that “Mylan has already taken—its ANDA filings—for the purpose of engaging in that injury-causing and allegedly wrongful marketing conduct in Delaware” were sufficient to satisfy the minimum contacts requirement.[9] The court also identified the significant expense a generic drug company incurs in the ANDA application process as evidence of an ANDA-filer’s plans to market the drug.[10] The court further noted that Mylan’s distribution channels in Delaware make clear that these future marketing activities would “unquestionably take place in Delaware (at least).”[11] The court concluded that the planned sales were “close enough” to the subject of the lawsuits to satisfy the minimum contacts requirement and justify specific jurisdiction in Delaware.[12]

Having found the minimum contacts requirement satisfied, the court considered whether Delaware’s exercise of jurisdiction would “offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”[13] The court held that other considerations, such as those identified in Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz,[14] would not render jurisdiction unreasonable.

III. The Logical Implications

By establishing specific personal jurisdiction by virtue of filing an ANDA with plans to direct sales of a generic drug into a particular state, a generic drug manufacturer, such as Mylan, would appear to be subject to specific jurisdiction in any state in which it intends to market the generic drug. Almost always, this will be any state in the country.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Daimler, branded-drug companies often asserted jurisdiction in a state based on general jurisdiction, arguing that the generic company was subject to jurisdiction in the state because it intended to sell the generic version of the drug in the state. In Daimler, however, the Supreme Court held that general jurisdiction cannot attach unless the defendant’s contacts with the forum state are “so continuous and systematic as to render [the non-resident corporate defendant] essentially at home in the forum State.”[15] A corporation is essentially at home only in its state of incorporation and the state where its principal place of business is located.[16] Daimler specifically rejected the notion that general jurisdiction will lie “in every State in which a corporation engages in a substantial, continuous, and systematic course of business.”[17] This decision in Daimler raised the concern as to whether brand name drug companies could continue to rely on general jurisdiction to file suits in the forum of their choice. However, the court’s ruling in Acorda, by establishing specific jurisdiction based on filing an ANDA with plans to sell the drug in a state, arguably makes the high bar for general jurisdiction established in Daimler of little significance in ANDA cases.

Thus, under Acorda, brand name drug companies are likely to continue to have wide latitude in selecting the forum in which to sue an ANDA-filer. Delaware and New Jersey, where ANDA cases are often brought, are likely to continue to be forums of choice for ANDA cases.

IV. Expected Future Litigation

Letters filed by Mylan in pending district court actions indicate that Mylan plans to seek panel and en banc rehearing in Acorda.[18] The letters provide a preview of Mylan’s potential arguments for rehearing. Mylan is expected to argue that Acorda’s holding that Mylan is subject to specific jurisdiction in every state “is contrary to the basic notion of specific jurisdiction and the more basic constitutional guarantees at the heart of the Supreme Court’s due process/personal jurisdiction jurisprudence.”[19] Mylan is further expected to argue that Acorda was wrongly decided because it “simply recreates the pre-Daimler status quo by allowing courts throughout the nation to rely on specific jurisdiction where general jurisdiction is no longer applicable.”[20] Mylan also indicates that it will argue that Acorda’s reliance on Mylan’s future contacts in Delaware is contrary to the Supreme Court’s Walden v. Fiore decision[21] and that the present decisions are misplaced in view of prior Federal Circuit precedent in Zeneca Ltd. v. Mylan Pharm., Inc.,[22] where the Federal Circuit “held that submission of an ANDA to the FDA in Maryland did not authorize the exercise of jurisdiction over the ANDA-filer by Maryland federal courts.”[23] Acorda, Mylan argues, makes “Zeneca merely academic.”

Regardless of the Federal Circuit’s final ruling, the losing party may very well file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s decision. That Acorda and Mylan were represented at the Federal Circuit by former Solicitor Generals (Theodore Olson for Acorda and Paul Clement for Mylan), while AstraZeneca was represented by another Supreme Court veteran (Kannon Shanmugam), shows that each party considers this case to be important and that they are likely preparing to ask the Supreme Court to consider the matter. So the panel decision in Acorda appears to be merely the beginning of the appellate proceedings. Given these expected actions it will be interesting to see if the brand name drug companies continue to file suits in both the brand name drug company’s preferred jurisdiction as well as where the generic drug company is incorporated or has its principal place of business until all the Acorda appellate proceedings are concluded.

= = = = =

[1] Paul E. Dietze, Ph.D., is Of Counsel in the Washington, DC office and Mini Kapoor, Ph.D., is an associate in the Houston, Texas office of the law firm of Haynes and Boone, LLP. Their practices emphasize pharmaceutical patent counseling, patent procurement, and patent litigation.

[2] Acorda Therapeutics Inc. et al. v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., No. 2015-1456 and AstraZeneca AB v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., No. 2015-1460, 2016 WL 1077048 (Fed. Cir. March 18, 2016) [Patently-O Discussion].

[3] Acorda Therapeutics Inc. & Alkermes Pharma Ireland Ltd. v. Mylan Pharm. Inc. & Mylan Inc., 78 F. Supp. 3d 572 (D. Del. 2015) (Stark, C.J.); AstraZeneca AB v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., 72 F. Supp. 3d 549 (D. Del. 2014) (Sleet, J.).

[4] Acorda, No. 1:14-cv-00935, 2014 WL 8772659 (Defs.’ Br. Supp. Mot. Dismiss) (Aug. 27, 2014); AstraZeneca, No. 14-696, 2014 WL 4745288 (Defs.’ Br. Supp. Mot. Dismiss) (June 26, 2014).

[5] 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014).

[6] Acorda, No. 1:14-cv-00935, 2014 WL 8772659 (Defs.’ Br. Supp. Mot. Dismiss 3, 6) (Aug. 27, 2014); AstraZeneca, No. 1:14-00696, 2014 WL 4745288 (Defs.’ Br. Supp. Mot. Dismiss 5, 13) (June 26, 2014).

[7] Acorda, 78 F. Supp. 3d at 597; AstraZeneca, 72 F. Supp. 3d at 560.

[8] Judge O’Malley opined that by virtue of voluntarily electing to do business in Delaware, and registering and selecting an agent for service of process in the state, Mylan was subject to general jurisdiction in Delaware. Acorda, Nos. 2015-1456 & 2015-1460, 2016 WL 1077048 at *11 – *12 (Judge O’Malley concurring).

[9] Acorda, Nos. 2015-1456 & 2015-1460, 2016 WL 1077048 at *8 -*9.

[10] Id. at *11 – *12.

[11] Id. at *13.

[12] Id.

[13] Id. at *13 -*14 (quoting Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945)).

[14] 471 U.S. 462, 477 (1985).

[15] Daimler, 134 S. Ct at 758 n.11 (emphasis added).

[16] Id. at 760.

[17] Id. at 760-61 (internal quotations omitted).

[18] See, for example, Takeda GmbH, et al., v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., 1:15-cv-00093 (N.D. W. Va.) (Defs.’ Letter Status Rep.) (Mar. 25, 2016).

[19] Id.

[20] Id.

[21] 134 S. Ct. 1115 (2014).

[22] Takeda GmbH, et al., v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., 1:15-cv-00093 (N.D. W. Va.) (Defs.’ Letter Status Rep.) (Mar. 25, 2016).

[23] 173 F.3d 829 (Fed. Cir. 1999).

Guest Post: The AIA, Inter Partes Review, and Takings Law

May 3, 2016PatentAIA Trials, anticipation, Claim Construction, Federal Circuit En Banc, IPR, PGR, Trade Secrets, USPTO DirectorJason Rantanen

In a provocative new article called “Taking Patents,” 72 Wash & Lee L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016), Gregory Dolin (Baltimore) and Irina Manta (Hofstra) argue that the Federal Government effectuated a taking through its creation and implementation of the inter partes review mechanism. Below, Camilla Hrdy and Ben Picozzi summarize the main points of their recent response to Dolin and Manta, “The AIA Is Not a Taking: A Response to Dolin & Manta,” 72 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 472 (2016).

Gregory Dolin and Irina Manta argue in a forthcoming article that the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) effectuated a Fifth Amendment “taking” by enhancing the mechanisms for challenging issued patents in administrative proceedings. Initial data do indicate that patents are more likely to be found invalid in the new inter partes review (IPR) and covered business method review (CBMR) proceedings than in district court actions or through the IPR and CBMR’s administrative predecessors. Patentees’ have even complained that the filing of individual IPR petitions has affected their stock prices.

Has the AIA made it too easy to invalidate a patent? Have patentees been treated unfairly? Maybe. Maybe not. But one things is clear: Dolin and Manta’s argument that the AIA is a taking faces serious legal hurdles.

First, Dolin and Manta’s premise that patents are property rights protected by the Takings Clause is far less clear than they contend. While the Supreme Court has recently suggested that patents, like land, “cannot be appropriated or used by the government itself, without just compensation,” see Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015) (quoting James v. Campbell, 104 U.S. 356, 358 (1882)), both that statement, and the statement it quotes, are dicta. More recent decisions express greater ambivalence regarding patents’ status under the Takings Clause.

In contrast with trade secrets, the Supreme Court has never held that patents are property under the Takings Clause. In Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 U.S. 627 (1999), the Court held that Congress can’t abrogate states’ sovereign immunity from patent infringement claims. In reaching this conclusion, the Court stated that patents are “surely included within the ‘property’ of which no person may be deprived by a State without due process of law.” Id. at 642. But the Court declined to rule on patents’ status under the Takings Clause. See id. at 642.

Most recently, in Zoltek Corp. v. United States, 442 F.3d 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (per curiam), vacated on other grounds, 672 F.3d 1309, 1314–22 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (en banc), the Federal Circuit held (rightly or wrongly) that 28 U.S.C. § 1498 is the only means of recovery for patentees whose patents are infringed by the U.S. government. Patentees can’t bring claims for compensation under the Takings Clause. Although the court eventually vacated that decision, the court never repudiated the reasoning behind its constitutional holding.

Dolin and Manta try to get around Zoltek by arguing that, unlike government infringement—which is like a forced permit and leaves all the rights of a patent intact—the AIA “changed the scope of patent rights themselves” by subjecting issued patents to more stringent post-issuance review. However, courts have not endorsed that argument, and analogs are difficult to find.

Second, even if we accept the argument that government can potentially take patents by altering their scope retroactively, courts are unlikely to view post-issuance review proceedings as the kinds of government actions regulated by the Takings Clause. Courts assessing constitutional challenges under the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment tend to distinguish actions intended to “cure” defects in government administrative systems from incursions on property rights. In Patlex Corp. v. Mossinghoff, 758 F.2d 594 (Fed. Cir. 1985), the Federal Circuit rejected a very similar challenge to IPR’s predecessor based partly on this distinction, noting that reexamination statute belonged to “the class of ‘curative’ statutes, designed to cure defects in an administrative system[,]” and that such statutes are treated more favorably for Fifth Amendment purposes even when they devalue property rights. We see little reason that a court would reach a different conclusion today.

Lastly, even if a court decides it is possible for the government to take patents by subjecting them to more stringent post-issuance review, Dolin and Manta’s argument almost certainly loses as a matter of takings doctrine. To determine whether a particular governmental action effectuates a taking, courts assess “the character of the governmental action, its economic impact, and its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations.” See Penn. Cent. Transp. Co. v. City of New York, 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978). Thus, even assuming we accept that the AIA significantly devalued all patents (a big “if”), whether this constitutes a taking depends on whether patentees should have anticipated that Congress would amp up administrative review, given the existing regulatory background.

Dolin and Manta argue the AIA’s enhanced IPR and CBMR proceedings interfered with patentees’ “reasonable investment-backed expectations” by increasing the likelihood that their patents would be found invalid in administrative proceedings utilizing patentee-unfriendly rules such as “preponderance of the evidence” standard for invalidation and “broadest reasonable construction” with limited opportunity to amend. But, as Dolin and Manta concede, the AIA was enacted against a background of federal statutes and regulations that authorize challenges to patent validity. IPR and CBMR review are only the latest in a series of administrative procedures authorizing parties to offensively challenge the validity of issued patents. To us, it seems highly unlikely that the question of whether the Takings Clause applies to the creation of new IPR and CBMR review could turn on such small differences as whether or not patentees have a full opportunity to amend their claims during review.

Also, it is worth noting that beyond third party challenges to patent validity, numerous federal regulatory statutes limit patentees’ ability to exploit their inventions for purposes of health and safety. For example, various regulatory review statutes, such as the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), practically reduce effective patent lifetimes by prohibiting patentees from commercially marketing or using protected products prior to regulatory approval. Yet none of these statutes fully compensate patentees for their losses.

Are these actions all takings as well? This conclusion has troubling consequences. Does Congress really need to compensate patentees every time it passes a statute that significantly affects the value of issued patents? Could Congress pass regulations for the purpose of restraining bad-faith enforcement of patents that have already been granted? What about judicial actions that reduce the value of patents? Do they intend for Congress to compensate patentees in these cases or to take fewer actions limiting patent rights, simply due to the fear of effectuating a taking? This seems like a dangerous basis on which to formulate patent policy.

In any case, we think that, given this regulatory backdrop and the existence of administrative review proceedings for over thirty years, patentees could foresee—or reasonably should have foreseen—that the government would continue to actively regulate patent rights without “just compensation.”

Together, these arguments persuade us that the AIA is not a taking. Nevertheless, the authors’ article is a thought-provoking and educational analysis of the constitutional implications of Congress’s recent efforts to reform the patent system. We thank them for reopening the door on this area of scholarship.

Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases 2016 (May 3 Update)

May 3, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, IPR, Marking, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Laches: The Supreme Court granted SCA’s writ of certiorari on the question of whether laches defense applies to block back-damages in patent cases. The Federal Circuit says “yes” while the Supreme Court recently said “no” in a parallel copyright case (Patrella). The Supreme Court decided Patrella 6-3 with Justice Scalia in the majority offering the potential of a tight-split in this case. The court looks to be sitting-on the parallel case of Medinol v. Cordis until SCA is decided.

Copyright on Useful Articles: Although not a patent case, the court also decided to hear a “useful article” copyright case. Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands. The case asks whether the stripes and chevrons found in a cheerleader uniform are sufficiently “separable” from the uniform in order to be copyrightable. The useful article doctrine is generally considered to be setting up a boundary line between the domains of copyright and patent.

More Challenges to USPTO Authority: MCM filed its petition for writ of certiorari directly challenging USPTO authority to conduct inter partes review proceedings with two easy questions:

Does IPR violate Article III of the Constitution?
Does IPR violate the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution?

[MCM Petition and Appendix] MCM’s brief was filed Tom Goldstein along with Ned Heller. The question for the Supreme Court is whether to extend or contract from its position in Stern v. Marshall, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011) where the court held that Article III of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from withdrawing “from judicial
cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty.” Quoting Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 59 U.S. 272 (1856)).

The brief raises a set of interesting old cases focusing both on the separation of powers and the tradition that patent-revocation for invalidity requires a jury to decide disputed facts.

Ex Parte Wood & Brundage, 22 U.S. 603 (1824)
McCormick Harvesting Mach. Co. v. C. Aultman & Co., 169 U.S. 606 (1898)
Mowry v. Whitney, 81 U.S. 434 (1871)
Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 59 U.S. 272 (1856)
Neilson v. Harford, Webster’s Patent Cases 295 (1841)
Pennock v. Dialogue, 27 U.S. 1 (1829)
United States v. Am. Bell Tel. Co., 128 U.S. 315 (1888)

Cooper v. Lee raises some parallel issues. Its petition will be considered by the Court in its May 12. [Update: The court has “rescheduled” consideration of Cooper’s brief – perhaps awaiting its own determination in Cuozzo.]

Hereby Assign Future Inventions: In Shukh v. Seagate, the petitioner raises the long-brewing question involving the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of patent assignments. In particular, the Federal Circuit has ruled – as a matter of federal patent law – that patent rights are assignable before their invention is even contemplated. The petition asks:

[W]hether FilmTec’s “automatic assignment” rule should be overruled because it extinguishes inventors’ constitutional and statutory rights to inventorship and ownership.

In Stanford v. Roche, Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor criticized the Federal Circuit’s rule and suggested that the issue should be presented in a future case. The majority expressly noted that its opinion did not decide the issue. [Shukh v. Seagate – Redacted Public Petition]

Disparaging Trademarks: A pair of disparaging trademark cases have also been petitioned: Lee v. Tam (“Slants”) and Pro-Football v. Blackhorse (“Redskins”). The Federal Circuit previously held the limit on registering disparaging marks to be an unconstitutional abrogation of the freedom of speech.

The big list: (more…)

Patent Quality Symposium Report – USPTO Patent Quality Initiative Moving Forward

April 28, 2016PatentAIA Trials, anticipation, Enablement, obviousness, PGR, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

Guest Post by Professors Colleen Chien, Santa Clara University Law School and Arti Rai, Duke Law School

On Wednesday, April 27, 2016, the USPTO hosted a day-long conference around the one-year anniversary of its Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative. We were among the over 1,800 virtual attendees (in addition to over 400 participants at USPTO headquarters and in the satellite offices) and provide this brief summary of some of the highlights. A recording of the day is available here, and information on the launch of the Office’s Stakeholder Training on Examination Practice and Procedure (STEPP) program is here. The USPTO’s current request for comments on patent quality metrics, including the Master Review Form (MRF), is due May 24. Santa Clara Law research assistant Angela Habbibi is pulling together a summary of the USPTO’s request for comments on quality case studies here, and the hardworking students of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal have done the same, with respect to comments submitted to the USPTO from last year, here, and comments submitted to the Journal here.

USPTO Director Michelle Lee and Deputy Commissioner for Patent Quality Valencia Martin-Wallace opened the day by highlighting four inter-related components: 1) the clarity of the record pilot; 2) new quality metrics, as embodied in a new Master Review Form; 3) using post-grant outcomes to improve patent examination; and 4) improved prior art search, so as to accomplish “compact prosecution.” Subsequent speakers discussed each of these components in detail, generally with a focus on one or more of the following themes – clarity, consistency, accountability, and collaboration.

Clarity of Record Pilot

Robin Evans, Director of TC 2800, focused on the clarity of the record pilot, which started in March and will run for 6 months. The pilot includes approximately 130 randomly selected examiner participants, (all GS 11-15 with at least years of 2 years of experience) and 45 SPEs. The USPTO anticipates processing about 2000 applications through the pilot.

Examiners in the pilot will focus on enhancing documentation of claim interpretation (including functional/112(f) language), giving more precise reasons for allowance, doing pre-search interviews at the request of the examiner, and giving more detailed interview summaries. Examiners are also supposed to document the amount of time they spend improving clarity. Examination conducted in the pilot will be compared with that conducted by a control group composed of similar examiners.

Master Review Form, Consistency, and Data Collection and Analysis

According to Director Lee and Brian Hanlon, the Director of the Office of Patent Legal Administration, the pilot’s emphasis on record clarity is also embodied in the new 25-page Master Review Form for quality, which places equal weight on clarity and correctness. As Marty Rater, Chief Statistician of the Office of Patent Quality Assurance explained in the afternoon, the MRF is the Office’s response to a general perception that the quality composite that the Office has long relied upon needed to be replaced. While not all 25-pages would be used for any one application, having a single uniform form will enable previously siloed reviews, carried on (for example) at the TC, OPQA, and other levels, to draw from a common core of data and improve consistency across the agency. Stakeholders in the afternoon session provided feedback on how the MRF could be made clearer and shorter, so as to facilitate consistent reviews.

A look at the 135 quality case study topics submitted for consideration to the USPTO in response to a recent request highlights that consistency in the application of Sections 101, 103, and 112 is perhaps the greatest concern. Consistency has ramifications for compact prosecution and continuation practice as well. If an applicant is confident that her applications are consistently subjected to high-quality examination, she may find it easier to appeal or abandon on the basis of a final rejection, rather than continuing the case in hopes of a different outcome from a different examiner on the same patent application.

In line with the case study suggestions, the USPTO aims to address concerns about particular types of examiner rejections and consistency across technology groups within the patent corps. To that end, it will be conducting studies on the use of section 101 and 112(f) by examiners; on the correctness and clarity of motivation statements in obviousness rejections based on combining references; and enforcement of written description requirements in continuation applications.

The release by the Patent Office of large amounts of data in accordance with the Obama Administration’s decision to treat government data as a national asset of the American people has led to the burgeoning of patent data companies and innovation, with at least 135 companies relying on patent data, according to a count by one of us. But a question regarding data analysis by external sources prompted Valencia Martin-Wallace to note that these external sources produced results that didn’t always match the USPTO’s own analyses. Deputy Director Russ Slifer elaborated on this theme by noting that the USPTO wanted to be part of the community dialogue on data analysis and had recently put out a large amount of publicly available, freely analyzable data at https://developer.uspto.gov.

Use of Post-Grant Outcomes

Jack Harvey, the Acting Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations, discussed several objectives with respect to a just-initiated pilot, expected to last 3-4 months, that will use of post-grant outcomes to enhance quality. First, in cases where patents petitioned before the PTAB have related applications pending, the examiner on the related applications will receive the petition. Second, and more broadly, data collected from post-grant proceedings will be used to improve examiner search strategy, both at the level of the individual examiner and also across the corps. It’s our understanding that such “feedback loops” have also been a feature of EPO practice: in which nullity proceedings involve the original patent examining team that granted the patent, which can then learn from the post-grant proceedings.

Improved Search and Training

According to Maria Holtmann, Director of International Programs, the goal of improved search will also be pursued through a pilot, to be begun later this year, that will “jumpstart” search by providing automated pre-examination search results. Ongoing pilots are currently providing examiners with JPO and KIPO search reports prior to the first office action. And the Global Dossier now provides examiners and the public with “one-stop access” to dossiers of all related applications in the IP5.

We were happy to hear that access to comprehensive prior art sources – including non-patent sources – earlier in the examination process is seen as a major patent quality lever. Work by one of us suggests that European Patent Office search reports cite non-patent literature sources more than USPTO examiners rely upon on them in their own examination, but a number of existing and future initiatives could close this gap. As Donald Hajec, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations, described, the USPTO is promoting greater awareness of non-patent technical sources, through the STIC, crowdsourcing of NPL, and technical training by outside scientists through the PETTP program, for example. And in line with numerous commentators who have emphasized the importance of Section 112 in policing quality, Hajec stressed the extensive training examiners, particularly those in electrical/mechanical and computer/software art units, have received on Section 112(a) (written description and enablement), 112(b) definiteness, and 112(f).

Collaboration

During the last set of panels, moderated by Deputy Director Russ Slifer, participants from companies and law firms acknowledged the responsibility for patent quality that stakeholders share with the USPTO. The participants on the panel provided their sense of 1) what initiatives of the USPTO initiatives are working for stakeholders and what needs improvement, 2) the wide variability in the business uses of patents based on company size and industry, and 3) what stakeholders could do, on their own or in conjunction with Examiners, to improve the quality of submitted applications and patent prosecution.

In particular, props were given to Track One, which Bill Bunker of Knobbe commented that certain clients (not small entities) use exclusively, with a much more efficient outcome. He also described the First Action Interview Program as a good early opportunity to achieve a meeting of the minds. Other panelists applauded the USPTO for focusing on patent quality, a topic that they thought had significant economic consequences and was imperative to the functioning and perception of the patent system. However, Laura Sheridan of Google observed that the voluntary nature of certain initiatives like the glossary pilot program limited their impact, and that mandatory enforcement would likely be more effective at raising quality uniformly across applications.

An interesting question is whether or not all patents “need” to be of the highest quality, given the diverse business uses of patents by different types of companies and industries. SAS files patents primarily for defensive reasons, commented Tim Wilson, and needs to have reliable patents for negotiations. In contrast, according to Bill Nydegger of Workman Nydeggerr commented, startups are often just trying to validate their technology and get an issued patent, rather than thinking about it being tested in court or negotiations. Biopharma patents often prove their value in the last five years of a patent’s life, with written description and utility requirements providing the most important filters, Kevin Noonan of MBHB commented.

For both the USPTO and prosecutors, the challenge of increasing quality in the face of flat budgets and price pressure is quite real, although perhaps less of an issue in the biopharma sector. In that vein, several ways to do more with less were discussed. In response to a question from Deputy Director Slifer, panelists discussed how they could continue to ensure that patent prosecutors were actually pursuing a strategy that serves the business use – whether that be to cover one’s own product or that of a competitor. Although getting an issued patent is often the goal of the prosecutor, if its scope is diminished to such a degree that it doesn’t make business sense, cutting off prosecution earlier may be the right approach. In addition, greater collaboration between examiners and applicants earlier in the process could streamline the process. Examiners would probably appreciate applicant summaries of the subject matter. Though applicants are loath to put material into the record, examiners could perhaps get a demonstration of the technology before examination and search began, enabling a substantive discussion of the prior art early in the process.

One question that deserves more attention, in our opinion, is whether the USPTO could provide “model applications” or patents to facilitate public understanding of what a “quality” application looks like from the standpoint of the USPTO. Shared responsibility comes from shared understanding. The newly devised STEPP program, to educate law-firm and in-house practitioners on how Patent Examiners review applications, starting in July, as well as the Symposium overall, are important steps in achieving shared understanding, and we join the patent community in applauding USPTO efforts.

To further these efforts, our institutions, Santa Clara and Duke Law Schools, will be hosting two conferences on USPTO initiatives and other levers for improving patent quality later this year. The conferences will be held in Santa Clara and also in the DC area and will focus on empirical evaluation of patent quality levers. We will provide more information on these forthcoming conferences shortly.

The Gatekeeping Function of Patent Eligibility as Part of a More Complete Understanding of § 101 Principles

April 24, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, anticipation, Federal Circuit En Banc, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter EligibilityDennis Crouch

Guest Post by Bruce Wexler and Edwin Mok

From a review of the opinions expressed in the majority decision and rehearing denial in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., 788 F.3d 1371, reh’g en banc denied, 809 F.3d 1282 (Fed. Cir. 2015), petition for cert. filed (No. 15-1182, Mar. 21, 2016), and in the briefs filed by various parties in relation to Sequenom Inc.’s petition for writ of certiorari, we can see several different viewpoints emerge with respect to the case. Some express the viewpoint that the case reached the wrong outcome, either because the Court (a) misunderstood the facts relating to the invention or patent, (b) misapplied existing § 101 principles, or (c) both. Others express the viewpoint that the case reached the right outcome, either because the Court (a) correctly applied § 101 principles, or (b) incorrectly did so but would have reached the same outcome under a correct analysis. And there are also some who express the viewpoint that the case correctly applied current § 101 eligibility principles but still reached a wrong outcome, such that § 101 requires a serious overhaul, or should be done away with altogether as a patentability criterion. In this article, we do not take a position on any of these viewpoints. Rather, we write to shed more light on the gatekeeping function of patent eligibility which we see permeating judicial decisions on § 101, making it worthy of careful contemplation when considering any one of the positions expressed above.

Analysis of § 101 patent eligibility generally involves discourse using the term “preemption.” The Supreme Court, for example, has described preemption as driving the exclusionary principle under § 101. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014); see also Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs. Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289, 1294 (2012) (“[Our precedents] warn us against upholding patents that claim processes that too broadly preempt the use of a natural law.”). But, at the same time, we see in the cases that complete preemption by a patent claim—in the sense of a claim so broad it just recites an abstract idea or natural phenomenon—has not been the sine qua non of patent ineligibility. For example, we have seen the Supreme Court reject eligibility arguments that merely contend that the claim in fact recites some physical structure, and so does not completely preempt the underlying abstract idea or natural phenomenon itself (putting aside for the moment what that structure is). The late Chief Judge Archer explained why such arguments are unsatisfactory in a dissent he authored over twenty years ago in In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994), in which he opposed the patentability per se of a mathematical algorithm just because the claim referenced generic computing structures. His reasoning was strikingly similar to that appearing more recently in Mayo. As Chief Judge Archer observed, if patent eligibility was necessarily satisfied by reciting any physical structure, then Diamond v. Diehr would have been a much shorter opinion, and Flook and Benson would have come out the other way. Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1557. Alice too would have come out the other way, since some of the claims there recited generic computing structures. See Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2358-59 (“There is no dispute that a computer is a tangible system (in § 101 terms, a ‘machine’) . . . [b]ut if that were the end of the § 101 inquiry, an applicant could claim any principle of the physical or social sciences by reciting a computer system configured to implement the relevant concept.”).

A way to make sense of this situation is to consider the gatekeeping function that § 101 plays within the patent law, also discussed within the Supreme Court cases but at times in a more subtle way. To understand this function more clearly, we can look to the hypothetical discussed by Chief Judge Archer to explain how § 101, when correctly applied, “lays the predicate for the other provisions of the patent law.” Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1553. This hypothetical illustrates that, but for § 101 eligibility principles, a patent could be awarded for originating a new musical composition—something generally agreed to be outside the subject of patent law—by claiming the song in a generic physical form such as a CD (it was the 1990s, after all). Id. at 1553-54. Assuming the musical composition was original, the physical structure of the CD would contain a unique assembly of pits and lands specific to that new piece of music, and thus it would be a composition of matter that is structurally novel under § 102. And because “the patent law cannot examine music for ‘nonobviousness,’ the Patent and Trademark Office could not a make a showing of obviousness under § 103” (which it would be their burden to do). Id. at 1554. And even if they could examine this question, the PTO examiners ought not to be judging musical compositions for obviousness (e.g., imagine patent examiners charged with determining whether a guitar lick or chord progression is obvious under patent law). The result of allowing through the eligibility gate a claim reciting a CD (or equivalent generic structure) embodying the new song could be patent exclusivity granted for discovering a new musical composition. Chief Judge Archer posited that § 101 acts as a gatekeeper to prevent such discoveries from being eligible themselves for analysis of patentability under the remaining patent law provisions.

The Supreme Court has also discussed this gatekeeping aspect of patent eligibility. In Mayo, the Court rejected the government’s argument as an amicus that “virtually any step beyond a statement of a law of nature itself should transform an unpatentable law of nature into a potentially patentable application sufficient to satisfy § 101’s demands.” Mayo, 132 S.Ct. at 1303. In so doing, the Court discussed the limitations of patent law’s other provisions to judge ineligible subject matter:

We recognize that, in evaluating the significance of additional steps, the § 101 patent-eligibility inquiry and, say, the § 102 novelty inquiry might sometimes overlap. But that need not always be so. And to shift the patent-eligibility inquiry entirely to these later sections risks creating significantly greater legal uncertainty, while assuming that those sections can do work that they are not equipped to do.

Id. at 1304 (concluding that §§ 102, 103, and 112 cannot “substitute . . . for the better established inquiry under § 101”). The Court recognized that the presence of a law of nature in a claim would not be entirely ignored when analyzing novelty and nonobviousness, since it is indeed an aspect of the claimed invention. Id. In other words, the entirety of the claimed subject matter that passes through the eligibility gate is evaluated for novelty and nonobviousness. This operation of the patent law is viewed as supporting a need for an eligibility inquiry up front, which asks whether the invention as described and claimed by the patentee as a whole resides in something more than just the new idea or law of nature itself, so that it is appropriate to allow the claim as a whole to be judged by the remaining substantive patentability provisions. And, from this perspective, we can also understand how very basic questions of a patent’s stated novelty for the claimed subject matter, and the breadth of the claim, can impact how the eligibility question is answered. See, e.g., id. at 1295, 1297-98; Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2359-60; Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S.Ct. 2107, 2116-19 (2013).

Chief Judge Archer’s hypothetical in dissent wound up playing out in the area of business method patents. The Federal Circuit’s decision in State St. Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Fin. Grp., Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), having as a foundation the majority opinion in Alappat, opened the floodgates for patenting new methods of conducting business. Seismic changes in the way banking was done during the late 1980s (see The Big Short for a dramatization of that happening) fostered this eventual patenting explosion. Although these patents generated controversy, it would take over a decade and a half, until Alice, for the Supreme Court to rule that inventions residing in a way of doing banking business were simply beyond the realm of patent law, even where the claims recited generic computing structures. See Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2360. This decision has dramatically changed how lower courts look at business method patents. See, e.g., Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (reversing its own two pre-Alice rulings that had upheld validity, and finding the patents in suit to be ineligible).

Currently, the gateway through which a proposed invention must pass is based on Supreme Court precedent, including the Mayo ruling. In close cases, the § 101 principles may not be so easy to apply, especially since inventions generally speaking are constituted from arrangements of physical forms, which call into operation laws of nature and natural principles, arriving at a useful result. See, e.g., Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1551-52 (quoting G. Curtis, A Treatise on the Law of Patents for Useful Inventions at xxiii-xxv (4th ed. 1873)); cf. Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co., 339 U.S. 605, 609-10 (1950) (underlying a claimed invention is its “way,” the physical form; “function,” the principles of operation; and “result,” the effect achieved). Thus, the task of separating what is appropriate for the subject of patent law from what is not appears to inevitably demand a set of core principles, rather than a detailed recitation of rules that neatly answers every case in all technical areas. Historical efforts by courts to construct rigid mechanical tests for eligibility have, after struggling and evolving, ultimately failed. For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Federal Circuit’s predecessor court developed a series of rules for eligibility, which lengthened in name as subsequent cases recognized the need to address existing inadequacies—the so-called Freeman‑Walter‑Abele test—before it was finally rejected. See, e.g., State St. Bank, 149 F.3d at 1374. As Chief Judge Archer explained, “[w]ithout particular claimed subject matter in mind, it is impossible to generalize with bright line rules the dividing line between what is in substance [a patent-eligible application] versus merely the discovery of an abstract idea or law of nature or principle outside § 101.” Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1554. He observed that the copyright law has long lived with a similar tension in the idea/expression dichotomy (i.e., the principle that the expression of ideas can be protected by copyright but not ideas themselves). Id. at 1554 n.15; see also 17 U.S.C. § 102(b). However, as he explained, “[t]here are . . . answers in every § 101 case.” Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1554. One question that has arisen is whether the Federal Circuit’s more recent decision in Genetic Techs. Ltd. v. Merial L.L.C., Nos. 2015-1202, 2015-1203 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 8, 2016)—which stated (slip op. at 11) that it was effectively bound to its outcome by Ariosa, which was itself said to be compelled by Mayo in the opinion of Judge Lourie (Ariosa, 809 F.3d at 1284)—altogether signals an attempt to return to a set of bright-line rules, or whether these cases instead reflect a genuine acceptance and application of the Supreme Court’s § 101 principles on their specific facts. Either way, the Supreme Court precedents are ultimately bookends for understanding how to apply the law of eligibility in any particular situation.

As we can therefore see, § 101’s gatekeeping role is not distinct from the provision’s policy purpose of preventing undue preemption. A possible way to think about it is that if the Mayo test is properly applied, and the totality of claimed subject matter is allowed through the eligibility gate, then the law of novelty and nonobviousness and claim breadth should, for example, be operating on subject matter in a way that is appropriate under the patent law. This is a way to make sense of the different outcomes in Diamond v. Diehr (finding eligible a claim to an improved rubber-curing process that involved use of a computer algorithm) and Parker v. Flook (finding ineligible a claim to a method for using an algorithm to adjust alarm limits). See Alice, 132 S.Ct. at 2358. From a practice standpoint, thinking about § 101’s gatekeeping function in relation to the totality of the claimed subject matter may in some cases serve as a useful check on understanding how a court may perceive the patent eligibility issue. For example, if the novelty or nonobviousness analyses would devolve into an evaluation of the novelty or nonobviousness of an idea or natural phenomenon itself, without significantly more to that inquiry, that may indicate to the inventor, the patent examiner, or the court that the invention is treading near the borderline of patent-ineligible subject matter. This is a more nuanced understanding than simply regarding Mayo as articulating a “two-part test,” without adequate recognition as to what that test is trying to do.

In our next post, we consider the different opinions in the denial of the petition for rehearing in Ariosa and particularly their expressed commentary on principles of patent eligibility.

Bruce Wexler is a partner, and Edwin Mok an associate, in the New York office of Paul Hastings. Their practice focuses on patent litigation and trials. Mr. Wexler is also an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where he teaches an advanced patent course.

Section 101 – Pivotal Moment for Clarity on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility

April 21, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, anticipation, Federal Circuit En Banc, PGR, Subject Matter EligibilityJason Rantanen

Guest post by Bart Eppenauer. Mr. Eppenauer is the Managing Partner of the Seattle office of Shook Hardy & Bacon and former Chief Patent Counsel at Microsoft. In the interests of disclosure, Shook represents three of the many defendants/appellees in the McRo (Planet Blue) case discussed below. Mr. Eppenauer is not involved in that case.

We have reached a pivotal moment for the courts to provide more meaningful guidance on the contours of what actually is patent eligible subject matter (rather than what is not) and a workable framework for applying such guidance. A number of important cases are before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit involving patent subject matter eligibility in the wake of Alice v. CLS Bank Int’l and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs. Given the high invalidation rate of patents on Section 101 grounds at the Supreme Court, Federal Circuit, U.S. District Courts, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), interested stakeholders have justifiable concerns on the future value of patents involving software and life sciences, and the fallout this could have on American investment in these crucial industries.

On March 21, 2016, Sequenom, Inc. filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari seeking to overturn the Federal Circuit’s decision invalidating its pre-natal genetic testing patent as a patent ineligible natural law or phenomenon, in Sequenom, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. Ten days earlier, Versata Development Group also filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari challenging multiple findings by the Federal Circuit involving a Covered Business Method (CBM) Patent Review by the USPTO invalidating its software based hierarchical pricing engine patent. See Versata Development Group, Inc. v. SAP America, Inc. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari on subject matter eligibility were also filed in March in Cloud Satchel v. Barnes & Noble and Vehicle Intelligence Safety v. Mercedes-Benz USA. At the Federal Circuit, several important “abstract idea” cases are soon to be decided, including McRO (Planet Blue) v. Bandai Namco Games America on patents for automated lip synchronization of 3D animated characters, Intellectual Ventures v. Symantec involving malware and spam detection and email filtering patents, and Thales Visionix v. USA relating to a helmet mounted display system patent. Several of these cases could provide an excellent opportunity for the courts to provide more clarity on application of the Mayo/Alice test under Section 101.

The Sequenom case in particular may be the right case for the Supreme Court to reexamine the boundaries of Section 101, especially given the dramatic, if not unintended, impact that Mayo and Alice have had on subject matter eligibility decisions. At the heart of Sequenom, the Court has another opportunity to determine whether a novel method is patent eligible when it involves the research and discovery of naturally occurring phenomenon. Petitioner Sequenom asserts that the Court’s Mayo decision set out uncertain and indiscernible limits on Section 101 doctrine that has eroded trust in the patent system, such that the issue is “particularly life-threatening to life-science innovators.” (Petition p. 12). Several Federal Circuit judges seem to agree with this proposition. In his concurrence in affirming the district court’s decision under Section 101, Judge Linn remarked:

I join the court’s opinion invalidating the claims of the ’540 patent only because I am bound by the sweeping language of the test set out in Mayo…. In my view, the breadth of the second part of the test was unnecessary to the decision reached in Mayo. This case represents the consequence—perhaps unintended—of that broad language in excluding a meritorious invention from the patent protection it deserves and should have been entitled to retain.

In their concurrence on denial of rehearing en banc, Judges Lourie and Moore also strongly asserted that the Sequenom claims at issue were neither solely directed to a natural phenomenon, nor abstract, and “it is unsound to have a rule that takes inventions of this nature out of the realm of patent-eligibility on grounds that they only claim a natural phenomenon plus conventional steps, or that they claim abstract concepts.” But these judges agreed that the Federal Circuit panel “did not err in its conclusion that under Supreme Court precedent it had no option other than to affirm the district court.” And in his separate concurrence of denial of rehearing en banc, Judge Dyk noted:

Yet I share the concerns of some of my colleagues that a too restrictive test for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 with respect to laws of nature (reflected in some of the language in Mayo) may discourage development and disclosure of new diagnostic and therapeutic methods in the life sciences, which are often driven by discovery of new natural laws and phenomena. This leads me to think that some further illumination as to the scope of Mayo would be beneficial in one limited aspect. At the same time I think that we are bound by the language of Mayo, and any further guidance must come from the Supreme Court, not this court.

Without question, Section 101 is no longer a “coarse filter” for subject matter eligibility, as many jurists and practitioners believe it should be. That is evident from the recent landscape of Section 101 decisions since Alice. Of the more than 250 federal court decisions invoking Section 101 since Alice, 70% of those cases have found the patent invalid. And at the Federal Circuit, DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com stands alone as the sole decision upholding the patent under Section 101 among 31 decisions since Alice. My optimistic view that DDR Holdings would forge a sensible path on software patents and that more decisions would follow this path has simply not proven true to date. Nonetheless, given that so many of the patents before the Federal Circuit involved simple financial or business practices or other non-technical practices implemented on generic computers, there still may be hope that DDR Holdings will provide the underpinnings for further decisions clarifying the eligibility of software technology inventions.

Perhaps the nearest opportunity for such a clarification lies in the McRO/Planet Blue case, where we can expect a decision at any time. The case has been noted as a case to watch on software patentability in that the patents at issue arguably utilize complex and specific computer-implemented techniques for automated lip synchronization of 3D animated characters. Based on questions and comments from the judges during oral argument, the Federal Circuit may view this case as involving a technology-based patent that will dictate a different outcome under the Mayo/Alice test than so many of the negative decisions on business method or ecommerce patents with token computer implementation.

It will most likely be several months for a decision in Intellectual Ventures v. Symantec as the Federal Circuit heard oral argument on April 6, 2016. Intellectual Ventures (IV) argues that its patents are designed to improve computer network security through novel approaches to malware and spam detection and email screening. As such, IV believes that their patents solve problems “specifically arising in the realm of computer technology” and DDR Holdings demonstrates that the patents are patent eligible. Symantec counters that the IV patents use generic computing technology to apply basic concepts such as using the Dewey decimal system on digital files or applying standard mail routing practices to email instead of postal mail. IV likely has a better argument that DDR Holdings should apply than many of the recent Federal Circuit decisions where that argument has failed, but I could see this case going either way.

The Thales Visionix case involves a patent for helmet-mounted display systems (HMDS) for use in defense and aerospace applications such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Unlike traditional heads-up display systems which require a pilot to look straight ahead at a display to read tactical information, a HMDS projects tactical information onto the interior visor of a pilot’s helmet. This frees the pilot from looking straight ahead at a fixed point to receive the displayed information. The claims at issue are not as specific as their intended application, yet recite a motion tracking system that includes inertial sensors and an element for receiving signals from the inertial sensors to determine orientation of a tracked object. The Court of Federal Claims judge applied Alice in a sweeping fashion and found claim 1 amounted to nothing more than a system of generic inertial sensors and a receiving element, and claim 22 as nothing more than an instruction to solve a navigation equation. In concluding that the ultimate concern under Section 101 is one of “preemption,” the judge found that the scope of the patent’s claims is insufficiently limited under Mayo and Diamond v. Diehr, and granted the motion for judgment on the pleadings. Frankly, I was quite surprised to see this decision, and believe that it is an unfortunate example of the Mayo/Alice framework taken to its extreme. Briefing is ongoing in the case, so a decision is months away.

We are at a critical juncture on defining the proper scope and application of Section 101. Unless the judiciary delineates a clearer framework for enabling meaningful patent protection in areas like biotech and software where America has been a technology leader, the U.S. could rapidly lose its competitive edge in these vital industries. Without this guidance, the U.S. will cement its recent reputation as even more restrictive and less open to patenting important new and potentially life-saving technologies than other jurisdictions such as China and Europe, which was unthinkable just a few years ago. It is critical that the Federal Circuit take the opportunity in one of these pending cases to provide meaningful guidance on the proper scope and contours of patent subject matter eligibility applied to software related technology. Even more importantly, the Supreme Court should agree to hear the Sequenom case and clarify (or revise) its Mayo/Alice test to ensure that meritorious inventions in life sciences and software remain patentable. While I don’t believe it is yet time to take legislative action, recent calls for the abolition of Section 101 entirely and dissatisfaction with application of the Mayo/Alice test is reaching a critical level. These key cases offer a significant opportunity to establish much-needed clarifications. Should this opportunity be missed, it is hard to see how Congressional action can be avoided.

Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases 2016 (April 18 Update)

April 18, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, IPR, Marking, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Cuozzo: Prof Mann provides his preview of the April 25 oral arguments in Cuozzo v. Lee; and Cuozzo has filed its reply brief. Neither document address my the mootness concern regarding Cuozzo’s demand for an ordinary construction of claim terms rather than their broadest reasonable interpretation. As far as I have seen, nothing in the record suggests that a change in claim interpretation standard would alter the PTO’s determination.

Following its April 15 Conference, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a set of cases, including Vermont v. MPHJ; Limelight v. Akamai; Hemopet v. Hill’s Pet Nutrition; and Tas v. Beachy. In its April 1 Conference, the Court denied cert in Retirement Capital v. US Bancorp. That case had questioned whether subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is a ground specified as a condition for patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 282(b)(2).

The only patent cases surviving the April 15 conference are (1) Interval Licensing v. Lee that asks the same question as Cuozzo: Can the Patent and Trademark Office appropriately apply the “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard in construing patent claims in post-grant validity challenges?; and (2) Medinol v. Cordis that focuses on whether “the equitable defense of laches [may be used to] bar legal claims for damages that are timely under the express terms of the Patent Act.” Medinol is conceptually linked to the SCA Hygiene case that also raises the laches issue. The court will consider both cases in its April 22 conference and may likely couple the decision to grant/deny. The court is also scheduled to consider Cloud Satchel (abstract idea eligibility) and Globus Medical (appellate jurisdiction) at Friday’s conference. Neither of these cases offer much hope for the respective petitioner.

In Cooper v. Lee, the US Government filed its brief opposing certiorari. The government argues that Cooper’s Article III challenge to the IPR system “lack’s merit.”

[P]atents are quintessential “public rights” whose issuance and cancellation Congress may permissible entrust to a non-Article III tribunal. . . . Pursuant to its constitutional authority to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by establishing a patent system, Congress created the PTO – an agency with “special expertise in evaluating patent applications.” Kappos v. Hyatt, 132 S. Ct. 1690 (2012). It directed that agency to issue a patent if “it appears that the applicant is entitled to a patent” under standards set by federal law, 35 U.S.C. 131. Patents are accordingly rights that “exist only by virtue of statute.” Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U.S. 225, 229 n.5 (1964). They “dispose of public rights held by the government on behalf of the people.” Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 831, 849 n.2 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting).

The government also argues that the posture of the case lacks merits – in particular that Cooper’s collateral challenge to the procedures doesn’t work. Cooper has argued that “inter partes review violates Article III of the Constitution by authorizing an Executive Branch agency, rather than a court, to invalidate a previously issued patent.”

Daniel Bohnen has filed a brief on behalf of UK’s Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) in support of the Sequenom v. Ariosa petition. The brief argues that the court should look to “maintain international harmonisation in the law of patent-eligibility.”[AriosaCIPA]. More briefs in support of the petitioner are expected this week as is Ariosa’s opposition brief (if any).

Finally, Nova has filed its opposition in Dow v. Nova and is attempting to refocus attention on the merits of the indefiniteness decision rather than the procedure for reaching that decision. The difference in question presented is interesting:

Dow: Whether factual findings underlying a district court’s determination on the definiteness of a patent claim under the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. 112, like a district court’s factual findings underlying construction of a patent claim, are subject to appellate review only for clear error or substantial evidence rather than de novo review.

Nova: Whether the court of appeals correctly invalidated Dow’s patent claims as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112.

Explaining its shift of the question, Nova argues that “Dow’s petition rests on a false premise that the Federal Circuit refuses to give deference to factual findings” that underlie the definiteness determination. Nova is correct as to the Federal Circuit’s position — the only question here is whether the Supreme Court will order the appellate court to follow its own law in this case. [DowPetition][NovaOpposition]

The big list: (more…)

An Early Review of the Impact of Form 18’s Elimination on Pleading Direct Infringement

April 6, 2016PatentAIA Trials, First to Invent, obviousness, PGRDennis Crouch

Guest Post by Leeron Morad & Andrew J. Bramhall of Quinn Emanuel[i]

Introduction

On December 1, 2015, as part of a sweeping set of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 84 and its Appendix of Forms were abrogated. Patent litigators are no doubt well acquainted with Form 18, which set forth a generic complaint for patent infringement. Under the guise of notice pleading, the Form 18 complaint recited only the most basic factual allegations: it did not identify any asserted patent claims or any specific accused product models, nor provide an explanation of how those products allegedly infringe. Nevertheless, a direct infringement claim could survive a motion to dismiss simply by complying with Form 18.[ii]

As the effective date for the new amendments approached, practitioners began to consider how Form 18’s elimination might affect the pleading of direct infringement. In particular, they questioned whether newly filed claims would be analyzed under the “plausibility” standard established by the Supreme Court in Twombly and Iqbal[iii] and thus would require “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.”[iv] The possibility of a heightened pleading standard caused a considerable spike in the filing of complaints in the days leading up to December 2015: more than 250 patent infringement complaints were filed on November 30 alone.[v]

Early indications from the few issued district court decisions interpreting the amended Rules confirm that the pleading standard for direct infringement claims may indeed have changed. In this article, we look at two decisions applying the amended Rules—one from the District of Delaware and the other from the Central District of California—that provide an interesting glimpse of what may or may not suffice when pleading direct infringement today.

Case 1: RainDance Techs. Inc. v. 10x Genomics, Inc., No. 15-cv-00152, Dkt. 28 (D. Del. Mar. 4, 2016). [RainDance Decision]

In RainDance Techs., Inc. v. 10x Genomics, Inc., Judge Andrews of the District of Delaware granted 10x Genomics’ motion to dismiss RainDance’s and the University of Chicago’s claims for direct infringement of seven patents, finding that “Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged any infringement.”[vi] RainDance and the University of Chicago (collectively, the RainDance Plaintiffs) filed their original complaint against 10x Genomics in February 2015, and then filed an amended complaint in April 2015. 10x Genomics filed its motion to dismiss in May 2015, arguing (among other things) that the direct infringement claim fell short of the plausibility standard of Twombly and Iqbal.[vii]

The level of detail in the RainDance Plaintiffs’ complaint, which clocked in at 35 pages, almost certainly would have passed muster under Form 18. For each of the seven asserted patents, the RainDance Plaintiffs identified a representative claim that they alleged had been directly infringed.[viii] They also identified 10x Genomics’ accused product—a microfluidic DNA and RNA analysis platform—as well as the specific platform components implicated by the alleged infringement. As support for their allegations, the RainDance Plaintiffs included figures from 10x Genomics’ conference presentations describing the accused platform’s structure and its chemical workflow, as well as excerpts from 10x Genomics’ website.[ix]

Judge Andrews, however, found the RainDance Plaintiffs’ amended complaint lacking. He first noted that, despite the complaint’s length, the “essential factual allegations d[id] not take up much space.”[x] He took issue in particular with the RainDance Plaintiffs’ reliance on 10x Genomics’ promotional materials, adding that it did not appear the plaintiffs had “purchased one of [10x Genomics’] products to see how it actually works.”[xi] Judge Andrews also noted that the RainDance Plaintiffs filed the complaint “less than a month” after first learning about the 10x Genomics platform, suggesting they might have benefited from spending more time investigating the accused product before filing suit.

In assessing the adequacy of the direct infringement allegations, Judge Andrews also performed his own analysis of the exemplary patent claims identified in the complaint. He appeared to be searching for express factual allegations tying each asserted claim limitation to the accused products in a way that bridged the gap between technical claim language and the accused features.[xii] For example, Judge Andrews concluded that the complaint failed to address the “adjusting pressure” limitation of one asserted method claim: “[t]here is nothing in the complaint (at least so far as I can see) that hints at the role of pressure in Defendant’s products.”[xiii] In reference to a different asserted claim, he likewise noted that “[i]t is not obvious to me that what Plaintiffs described is an ‘autocatalytic reaction.’”[xiv] He ultimately determined that the RainDance Plaintiffs “ma[d]e no attempt to relate any of their factual assertions with any of the asserted claims” and dismissed the direct infringement claim as not plausibly alleged.[xv]

It is noteworthy that although the RainDance Plaintiffs filed their amended complaint in April 2015—nearly eight months before the new amendments went into effect—Judge Andrews chose “to apply the post-December 1, 2015, direct infringement pleading standard to the amended complaint” because “it would be in the interest of justice” to do so.[xvi] He did not, however, explain his reasoning for this conclusion or give an indication of whether he would come to the same conclusion in other already pending cases.

Case 2: InCom Corp. v. The Walt Disney Co., No. 15-cv-3011, Dkt. 26 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 4, 2016). [InCom Decision]

In contrast to Judge Andrews’ decision in RainDance, Judge Gutierrez’s decision in Incom Corp. v. The Walt Disney Co. provides an example of what at least one court considers to be sufficient to plead direct infringement under the amended Rules.[xvii] InCom filed its original complaint on April 22, 2015, and an amended complaint seven months later on Nov. 23, 2015, alleging infringement of three patents related to tracking systems using Radio Frequency Identification. Like the RainDance plaintiffs, InCom identified specific accused products in the complaint—namely, Disney’s attendance tracking device, “MagicBand,” and the “MyMagic+” attendance monitoring system. On December 10, 2015, not long after the new amended Rules went into effect, Disney moved to dismiss InCom’s amended complaint, arguing that it did not plausibly allege a claim for direct or indirect infringement.

Judge Gutierrez denied Disney’s motion to dismiss to the extent it sought to dismiss InCom’s direct infringement claims. As in RainDance, he first rejected InCom’s argument that the amended Rules should not apply because it filed the complaint before their effective date, December 1, 2015.[xviii] Citing the Supreme Court’s order adopting the amended Rules, which stated that the amendments should apply “insofar as just and practicable [in] all proceedings then pending,” Judge Gutierrez held that it was appropriate to require InCom to meet the “plausibility” standard in its amended complaint.[xix]

Even under the heightened pleading standard, however, Judge Gutierrez held that InCom’s amended complaint sufficiently pleaded a direct infringement claim. While acknowledging that “merely naming a product and providing a conclusory statement that it infringes a patent is insufficient to meet the ‘plausibility’ standard set forth in Twombly and Iqbal,” he found that InCom had done enough “by specifically identifying Defendants’ products and alleging that they perform the same unique function as Plaintiff’s patented system.”[xx] In particular, Judge Gutierrez emphasized that InCom “describe[d] how its Attendance Tracking System uses RFID technology and ID badges to track human presence in large volumes,” and “name[d] specific products developed, manufactured and used by Defendants which, like Plaintiff’s system, track human presence in large volumes.”[xxi]

Notably, in contrast with Judge Andrews, Judge Gutierrez did not require InCom to identify any exemplary asserted claims in its complaint, much less conduct any element-by-element analysis. Despite these missing details, he concluded that “[a]t this stage, it is sufficient that Plaintiff has made plausible allegations that each Defendant is responsible for direct infringement.”[xxii] In comparison with the RainDance decision, the InCom decision therefore appears to establish a lower threshold for “plausibly” alleging direct infringement under the amended Rules.

Conclusion

These two early decisions, while by no means definitive of the pleading standards under the amended Rules, suggest that patent plaintiffs were right to be concerned about a heightened requirement for pleading direct infringement. Because the amendments only went into effect fairly recently, however, only time will tell whether other district courts will apply the “plausibility” standard to direct infringement claims as well. It also remains possible that, despite the abrogation of Rule 84 and the Appendix of Forms, some courts may find that compliance with Form 18 is still enough to survive a motion to dismiss.[xxiii]

Yet even under the heightened “plausibility” standard, we would not be surprised to see meaningful differences emerge in the ways different districts—and even individual judges within districts—apply that standard to direct infringement claims. The decisions discussed in this article suggest such a trend: one seems to demand allegations that directly tie the claim language to the accused product, whereas the other accepts general discussion of the patented invention without the identification of any asserted claims.

Before filing suit, litigants should be mindful of these differences, lest they be faced with the prospect of having to amend and re-file their complaint—or perhaps worse. Indeed, it would be prudent for would-be plaintiffs to closely follow this area of law in the year to come, as it appears Form 18’s elimination is already changing how patents are litigated. Finally, existing plaintiffs should be aware that merely filing a complaint prior to December 1, 2015—even many months before that date—does not guarantee application of the Form 18 pleading standard.

= = = = =

[i] Leeron Morad is an associate and Andrew Bramhall is a partner in Quinn Emanuel’s Silicon Valley office. The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm or its clients. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

[ii] In re Bill of Lading Transmission & Processing Sys. Patent Litig., 681 F.3d 1323, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2012).

[iii] Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007); Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).

[iv] Twombly, 550 U.S. at 554-55, 570.

[v] Based on a Docket Navigator search of cases filed on November 30, 2015. By comparison, in the entirety of 2015, plaintiffs filed approximately 5,500 new patent cases. The filing of 250 cases represents almost 5% of the total for the year. http://www.law360.com/articles/755311/how-2015-s-crush-of-patent-lawsuits-kept-ip-attys-busy.

[vi] Case No. 15-cv-00152, Dkt. 28, at 5 (D. Del. Mar. 4, 2016).

[vii] According to 10x Genomics, the “plausibility” pleading standard should apply to the RainDance Plaintiffs’ direct infringement claim because pleading is governed by regional circuit law in the Third Circuit. Id., Dkt. 16, at 14-17. 10x Genomics also argued that the “plausibility” standard should apply because Form 18 was expected to be abrogated “during the early stages of this case.” Id. at 17.

[viii] E.g., id., Dkt. 12 ¶ 26.

[ix] Id. ¶¶ 16-20.

[x] Id., Dkt. 28, at 1.

[xi] Id. at 3.

[xii] See id. at 4 (“The requirements of the next to last element might be met, but involves quite a bit of supposition. I think, but am not sure, that partitioning samples is the same as amplification. . . .”).

[xiii] Id. at 3.

[xiv] Id. at 4.

[xv] Id. Judge Andrews dismissed the complaint without prejudice, however, because “Plaintiffs might very well be able to [plausibly allege infringement],” and gave the RainDance Plaintiffs three weeks to re-file. Id. at 5.

[xvi] Id. at 4-5.

[xvii] Case No. 15-cv-3011, Dkt. 39 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 4, 2016).

[xviii] Id. at 3.

[xix] Id. at 3-4 (quoting Supreme Court of the United States, Order Regarding Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Apr. 29, 2015)).

[xx] Id. at 4.

[xxi] Id.

[xxii] Id. at 5.

[xxiii] According to the Committee Notes to the amended Rules, “[t]he abrogation of Rule 84 does not alter existing pleading standards or otherwise change the requirements of Civil Rule 8.” It seems possible that a court could interpret this as intending to maintain the notice pleading standard for direct infringement claims.

Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases 2016 (April 1 Update)

April 1, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, Claim Construction, Damages, Federal Circuit En Banc, IPR, Marking, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter Eligibility, Supreme Court, USPTO Director, Written DescriptionDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Design Patent Damages: The Supreme Court has granted Samsung’s petition for writ of certiorari on the issue of design patent damages under 35 U.S.C. 289. The statute allows for disgorgment of the infringer’s “total profit,” but the question is total-profit-as-to-what? Certainly not the entire company. The Federal Circuit has ruled that the total profit applies to the article of manufacture (here a mobile phone) while Samsung argues that the profit should be reduced to the profits associated with the component at issue (the screen). The Supreme Court rejected the second proposed issue of design patent scope.

No Standing for Cuozzo?: I wrote some about the standing and appellate jurisdiction issue in Cuozzo earlier this week. [Link]. Up to now, Cuozzo has not explained how a Phillips claim construction would impact the outcome of its inter partes review. Cuozzo’s reply brief may address that issue – either way they almost have to come-up at oral arguments under questioning from Justice Breyer or Justice Sotomayor.

Post Sale Restraints: A key new petition was filed in Impression Products v. Lexmark on the issue of patent exhaustion and the extent that a manufacturer can rely upon patent rights to create post-sale use requirements and restrictions and limits on international trade. [Link]. In Sequenom, v. Ariosa, the court is subtly asked to reconsider and scale-back the language of Mayo v. Prometheus. The petition actually asks the court to stop mis-interpreting Mayo. [Link]. Vehicle Intelligence and Safety as well as Cloud Satchel also raise Section 101 challenges, but those cases are battling long odds.

Reviewing a Jury Verdict of Definiteness: New petition Dow v. Nova raises the interesting question regarding the standard for appellate review of factual findings that serve as the underlying basis for a definiteness determination. Based upon a logical extension of Teva v. Sandoz, those factual findings should be given deference even though the ultimate determination of definiteness is a question of law. An important distinction from pure claim construction is that (as here) juries may be tasked with the job of ruling whether a claim is indefinite. In that situation, the juries do not separate their factual conclusions from legal conclusions creating some amount of confusion. The original Federal Circuit opinion cited to Teva, but not for its holding regarding deference. I would not be surprised by a GVR order from the Supreme Court asking the Federal Circuit to reconsider based upon that holding. [DowPetition].

Flexible Obviousness Test Does Not Apply to Secondary Indicia of Nonobviousness: In Cubist Pharma v. Hospira, the petitioner-patentee challenges the Federal Circuit’s increasingly bright line limits on secondary indicia of nonobviousness. How do those limits mesh with the flexible doctrine outlined in Section 103 and explained by Deere and KSR. [CubistPetition].

Did the AIA Shrink Federal Circuit Appellate Jurisdiction?: Finally, in Globus Medical, the question focuses on Federal Circuit jurisdiction over appeals in former-patent-cases, but where the only issue appealed is a non-patent issue. This same issue was previously decided in favor of Federal Circuit jurisdiction. However, the AIA modified the language of the Federal Circuit appellate jurisdiction statute and opened the door to a re-visitation. 28 U.S.C. 1292. However, the argument barely carries the weight of its linguistics if that.

Previously, the Federal Circuit had appellate jurisdiction over cases if the district court’s jurisdiction could at least in-part be traced to 28 U.S.C. 1338 (giving district court’s jurisdiction over patent cases). The AIA amended the statute to give appellate jurisdiction to the Federal Circuit in any “civil action arising under” the patent laws. Since appellate jurisdiction ordinarily attaches at the notice-of-appeal filing stage, Globus Medical argues that former patent cases no longer “arise under” the patent laws once final judgment is issued and no patent questions are appealed.

Denials: Cert was denied in Daiichi Sankyo v Lee (term adjustment); ParkerVision (standard for setting aside jury verdict based upon errors in expert testimony); Biogen (district court jurisdiction over interferences post-AIA); Morales v. Square (eligibility); Joao Bock v. Jack Henry (eligibility); and BriarTek v. DeLorme (USITC preclusion issue).

The big list:

1. Petitions Granted:

Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Michelle K. Lee, No. 15-446 (BRI construction in IPRs; institution decisions unreviewable)
Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple Inc., No 15-777 (design patent damages calculation)
Stryker Corporation, et al. v. Zimmer, Inc., 14-1520 (enhanced damages) (linked with Halo)
Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., No. 14-1513 (enhanced damages) (linked with Stryker)

2. Petitions Granted with immediate Vacatur and Remand (GVR)

Medtronic Sofamor Danek USA, Inc., et al. v. NuVasive, Inc., No. 15-85 (Commil re-hash – mens rea requirement for inducement)

3. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Pending:

Indefiniteness: The Dow Chemical Company v. Nova Chemicals Corporation (Canada), et al., No. 15-1160 (standard for appellate review of jury verdict of definiteness that is inherently based upon the jury’s factual findings) [DowPetition]
Exhaustion: Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., No. 15-1189 (unreasonable restraints on downstream uses)
Obviousness: Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Hospira, Inc., No. 15-1210 (bright line limits on secondary indicia of nonobviousness) [CubistPetition]
Infringement by Joint Enterprise: Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., et al., No. 15-993 (can a defendant be held liable for the collective performance of method steps by multiple independent parties?)
Post Grant Admin: Versata v. SAP, No. 15-1145 (scope of CBM review)
Post Grant Admin: Cooper v. Lee, No. 15-955 (whether IPRs violate Separation of Powers; two amici now filed in support)
Post Grant Admin: Click-to-Call Tech, LP v. Oracale Corp., No. 15-1014 (Same questions as Cuozzo and now-dismissed Achates v. Apple)
Post Grant Admin: GEA Process Engineering, Inc. v. Steuben Foods, Inc., No. 15-1075 (Flip-side of Cuozzo: Can there be no appeal when the PTAB exceeds its authority by terminating an instituted IPR proceeding?)
Post Grant Admin: Interval Licensing LLC v. Michelle K. Lee, No. 15-716 (Can the Patent and Trademark Office appropriately apply the “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard in construing patent claims in post-grant validity challenges?)
Post Grant Admin: Stephenson v. Game Show Network, LLC, et al., No. 15-1187 (is BRI proper for IPR validity challenges?; Same as Cuozzo) [GameShowNetworkPetition]
Laches: Medinol Ltd. v. Cordis Corporation, et al., No. 15-998
Laches: SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag, et al. v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC, et al., No. 15-927 (three amici filed in support)
Biologics Notice of Commercial Marketing: Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc., et al., No. 15-1039 (Does the notice requirement of the BPCIA create an effective six-month exclusivity post-FDA approval?) (cross-petition asks for recourse on failure to dance).
Design Patents: Systems, Inc. v. Nordock, Inc., No. 15-978 (design patent damage calculations – similar issues as Samsung v. Apple)
Inducement: Life Technologies Corporation, et al. v. Promega Corporation, No. 14-1538 (whether an entity can “induce itself” under 271(f)(1))(CVSG, awaiting government brief)
Preclusion or Jurisdiction: Vermont v. MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC, No. 15-838 (Federal court jurisdiction in anti-troll consumer protection case)
Preclusion or Jurisdiction: Globus Medical, Inc. v. Sabatino Bianco, No. 15-1203 (Appellate jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit) [GlobusMedicalPetition]
Eligibility Challenges: Sequenom, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc., et al., No. 15-1182 (scope of the natural phenomenon eligibility exclusion)
Eligibility Challenges: Retirement Capital Access Management Company, LLC v. U.S. Bancorp, et al., No. 15-591 (Whether subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is a ground specified as a condition for patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 282(b)(2))
Eligibility Challenges: Hemopet v. Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc., No. 15-1062 (natural phenom case of tailoring a diet to a pet’s genomic characteristics)
Eligibility Challenges: Cloud Satchel, LLC v. Barnes & Noble, Inc., et al., No. 15-1161 (abstract idea eligibility) [CloudSatchelPetition]
Eligibility Challenges: Vehicle Intelligence and Safety LLC v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, et al., No. 15-1201 (abstract idea eligibility) [VehicleIntelligencePetition]
Damages: Innovention Toys, LLC v. MGA Entertainment, Inc., et al., No. 15-635 (Stryker/Halo follow-on – potential wait-and-see)

Damages: WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corporation, No. 15-1085 (consequential lost-profit damages for infringement under Section 271(f))
Written Description: Tas v. Beach, No. 15-1089 (written description requirement for new drug treatments)

4. Petitions for Writ of Certiorari Denied or Dismissed:

Daiichi Sankyo Company, Ltd. v. Michelle K. Lee, No. 15-652 (Patent Term Adjustment – whether the 180 day deadline applies; could bleed into admin law issues)
Parkervision, Inc. v. Qualcomm Incorporated, No. 15-1092 (“Whether and under what circumstances an inconsistency in expert testimony permits a court to set aside a jury verdict and grant the losing party judgment as a matter of law.”)
Joao Bock Transaction Systems, LLC v. Jack Henry & Associates, Inc., No. 15-974 (defining an abstract idea)
Biogen MA, Inc. v. Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, et al., No. 15-607 (Whether AIA eliminated federal district courts’ jurisdiction over patent interference actions under 35 U.S.C. § 146.)
BriarTek IP, Inc. v. DeLorme Publishing Company, Inc., et al., No. 15-1025 (Preclusive impact of ITC consent judgment).
Morales v. Square, No. 15-896 (eligibility under Alice)
ePlus, Inc. v. Lawson Software, Inc., No. 15-639 (what happens with a finally-determined permanent injunction after PTO cancels the patent claim?)
Media Rights Technologies, Inc. v. Capital One Financial Corporation, et al., No. 15-725 (Claim Construction: whether there a strong presumption against construing terms as subject to 35 U.S.C. § 112p6 that do not recite the term “means.”)
Alexsam, Inc. v. The Gap, Inc., No. 15-736 (appellate jurisdiction over patents that were dropped from case pre-trial)
Universal Lighting Technologies, Inc., v. Lighting Ballast Control LLC, No. 15-893 (intrinsic vs extrinsic evidence for claim construction).
STC, Inc. v. Global Traffic Technologies, No. 15-592 (Whether marking the packaging of a patented article with patent notification satisfies the marking provision of 35 U.S.C. § 287(a) where the patented article itself is undisputedly capable of being marked.)
Achates Reference Publishing, Inc. v. Apple Inc., et al., No. 15-842 (IPR institution decisions unreviewable, even when addressed in a final written decision by PTAB) [Note – This case was dismissed after being settled by the parties]
Alps South, LLC v. The Ohio Willow Wood Company, No. 15-567
Allvoice Developments US, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 15-538
OIP Technologies, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. 15-642
Fivetech Technology Inc. v. Southco, Inc., No. 15-381
Tyco Healthcare Group LP, et al. v. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., No. 15-115
Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., No. 15-561
Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Ltd., et al. v. Eidos Display, LLC, et al., No. 15-288
Kenneth Butler, Sr. v. Balkamp Inc., et al., No. 15-273
Arthrex, Inc. v. KFx Medical Corporation, No. 15-291
Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., et al., No. 15-559 (Commil re-hash – if actions were “not objectively unreasonable” can they constitute inducement?)
Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., et al. v. Apotex Inc., No. 15-281
Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Apotex Inc., No. 15-307
Luv N’ Care, Ltd. v. Munchkin, Inc., No. 15-242
Automated Merchandising Systems, Inc. v. Michelle K. Lee, Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office, No. 15-326
I/P Engine, Inc. v. AOL Inc., et al., No. 14-1358
Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL Inc., et al., No. 14-1362
Content Extraction and Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, et al., No. 14-1473
L. Gore & Associates, Inc. v. Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc., et al., No. 15-41
NetAirus Technologies, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 14-1353
Muffin Faye Anderson v. Kimberly-Clark Corporation, No. 14-10337
MobileMedia Ideas LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 15-206
SpeedTrack, Inc. v. Office Depot, Inc. et al., No. 15-461 (Kessler doctrine)
Rodney K. Morgan, et al. v. Global Traffic Technologies LLC, No. 15-602
Lakshmi Arunachalam v. JPMorgan Chase & Co., No. 15-691

5. Prior versions of this report:

Federal Circuit: No Opinion Serves as the Basis for Our Opinion

March 25, 2016PatentAbstract Idea, AIA Trials, anticipation, IPR, obviousness, PGR, Subject Matter EligibilityDennis Crouch

By Dennis Crouch

Chicago Board of Options Exchange v. International Securities Exchange (Fed. Cir. March 25, 2016)[1] and International Securities Exchange v. Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Fed. Cir. March 25, 2016) (Appeal No. 2015-1743)[2]

These appeals involve three CBOE patents directed to automated trading exchange systems. All three patents (all claims) were challenged in covered business method reviews and found by the PTAB to be ineligible under Section 101 (abstract ideas). In addition, two of the same patents (a subset of claims) were challenged in inter partes review proceedings, but in those cases the PTAB sided with the patentee and found the ISE had failed to prove invalidity (either obvious or anticipated).

The CBOE appealed the 101 invalidations, and ISE separately appealed the inter partes review denials. In an odd set of judgments, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB 101 rejections in a Rule 36 Judgment (no opinion issued). At the same time, the Federal Circuit also dismissed the IPR appeal as moot. However, in this second case the court did issue an opinion to explain the mootness following from the original no-opinion judgment. The court writes:

In this appeal, International Securities Exchange, LLC (“ISE”) challenges the determination of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) in inter partes review proceedings involving U.S. Patent Nos. 7,356,498 (“the ’498 patent”) (IPR2014-00097) and 7,980,457 (“the ’457 patent”) (IPR2014-00098). The Board found that ISE failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the challenged claims of the ’498 and ’457 patents are unpatentable as either anticipated, obvious, or both, under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) and 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). In light of our decision in Chicago Bd. Options Exch., Inc. v. Int’l Secs. Exch., Case Nos. 2015-1728, -1729, and -1730, issued contemporaneously herewith, affirming the Board’s conclusion that both patents address unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, we find this companion case moot. We dismiss the appeal and vacate the Board’s decisions.

The Federal Circuit’s use of R.36 No Judgement opinions is on the rise even while wringing its hands over the USPTO’s failure to explain its judgments to institute AIA trials.[3]

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[1] Appeal Nos. 2015-1728, 2015-1729, and 2015-1730. These cases are on appeal from three Covered Business Method Post Grant Review Proceedings. CBM2013-00049 (Pat. No. 7,356,498), CBM2013-00050 (Pat. No. 7,980,457), and CBM2013-00051 (Pat. No. 8,266,044).

[2] Appeal Nos. 2015-1743 and 2015-1744. These cases are on appeal from two inter partes review proceedings. IPR2014-00097, IPR2014-00098.

[3] See, Dennis Crouch, Federal Circuit: Our Muscles are Not Working, Patently-O (March 23, 2016)