Joshua Landau is the Patent Counsel at the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), where he represents and advises the association regarding patent issues. Mr. Landau joined CCIA from WilmerHale in 2017, where he represented clients in patent litigation, counseling, and prosecution, including trials in both district courts and before the PTAB.
Prior to his time at WilmerHale, Mr. Landau was a Legal Fellow on Senator Al Franken’s Judiciary staff, focusing on privacy and technology issues. Mr. Landau received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.S.E.E. from the University of Michigan. Before law school, he spent several years as an automotive engineer, during which time he co-invented technology leading to U.S. Patent No. 6,934,140.
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s precedential opinions on discretionary denial are the subject of significant attention—a withdrawn attempt by the Trump Administration to codify discretionary denial as a rule, a request for comments on rulemaking by the Office, and a challenge to the practice of discretionary denial as illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act.…
On Monday, the PTAB made clear that the ultimate outcome of the Fintiv rule championed by Director Iancu is the elimination of inter partes review (IPR) as a viable alternative to challenging patents in litigation. RAI sued Philip Morris on April 9th, 2020. Less than a month later, on May 8th, 2020, Philip Morris filed…
There are signs that, despite Judge Albright’s best efforts, the rest of the world might not support turning the Western District of Texas into another NPE haven like the Eastern District in its glory days. After Judge Albright’s efforts to make sure Waco was “open for business for patent cases”, NPEs flocked to the Waco…
This week, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a set of related cases between Arthrex and Smith & Nephew, as well as the federal government. The cases revolve around one fundamental question: are judges of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) principal officers of the United States? That question controls the constitutionality of their…
Judge Gilstrap of the infamously NPE-friendly Eastern District of Texas used to handle one out of every four patent cases in the entire United States. The Eastern District as a whole handled more than 40% of all patent cases nationally, despite only having about 1% of the nation’s population. After the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision…
Last week, the UK Supreme Court ruled that it was legally permissible for UK courts to set worldwide license rates for patents that are subject to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory license (FRAND) obligations. The decision is likely to have worldwide ramifications—and create worldwide chaos in SEP licensing.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a federal business lending program established by the 2020 CARES Act, intended to help small businesses retain jobs during the pandemic. In order to receive funds, companies applied and explained how many jobs they would save with the money they received. All of that data is publicly available. Cross-referencing…
Last week, Representative Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ) introduced a bipartisan bill that would return the International Trade Commission (ITC) to a focus on its mission of protecting American industry from unfair foreign competition. H.R. 8037, the “Advancing America’s Interests Act” (AAIA), would reform both the domestic industry and public interest inquiries…
Recently, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) proposed a concerning new rule. It would create serious due process problems, violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by changing an agency position without justification, increase the cost of inter partes review (IPR), and make it harder to invalidate bad patents in IPR. Given all these problems, it…
In today’s Uniloc v. Hulu decision, the Federal Circuit held that the PTAB is permitted to consider all issues of patentability, including § 101 (and presumably including § 112), when a patent owner proposes new claims in an inter partes review (IPR). While a petitioner can only file an IPR petition based on § 102…
