On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two separate cases regarding inter partes review (IPR)—Oil States v. Greene’s Energy and SAS Institute v. Matal. In both Oil States and SAS, the Court appears to be sympathetic to the Patent Office’s arguments—and that’s good for everyone. Oil States The Oil States case focuses on whether…
Tag Archive for America Invents Act
Misleading Stats Lead To Misleading Testimony In Front Of Congress
by Josh Landau •
Yesterday afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held a hearing on “Sovereign Immunity and the Intellectual Property System.” A fascinating topic, and one I’ve written on right here in the past. [1] [2] But I was struck by some testimony given by Philip Johnson, testimony he stood by…
Tribal Immunity May Not Be Wonder Drug For Allergan
by Josh Landau •
This article was originally published on Law360 and is reprinted here. You’ve probably already heard the story. Allergan PLC owns patents related to relieving dry eyes. These patents allegedly read on their drug Restasis. They expired in 2014, leading to a group of generic manufacturers getting ready to enter the market with generic versions of the drug. In…
IPR Successes: The Next Five Years
by Josh Landau •
Over the past month, I’ve shown just how successful the inter partes review (IPR) program has been in its first five years. IPR has saved billions of dollars and helped everyone from city governments to realtors to the targets of patent trolls funded by foreign countries. Those stories are listed below: IPR Successes: Trolls and…
IPR Successes: Cleaning Up Messes
by Josh Landau •
APTWater makes water treatment systems that clean up polluted groundwater and wastewater. You’ve probably never heard of APTWater. I hadn’t, nor had a friend who lives near their headquarters and works on water issues. Of course, that didn’t stop a patent troll from suing APTWater over their wastewater treatment technology. APTWater wasn’t the only one…
IPR Successes: Trolls and Tolls
by Josh Landau •
September marks the five-year anniversary of inter partes review (IPR), and Patent Progress is highlighting how successful the system has been at achieving its stated goals of increasing patent quality by providing a second look at invalid patents and decreasing costs by providing an efficient alternative to litigation. Last week, I showed that, in those 5…
Multiple Petitions? More Like Multiplicative Claiming And Assertion
by Josh Landau •
One of the criticisms frequently leveled against inter partes reviews (IPRs) is that people file multiple IPRs; they file two, three, four IPR petitions in order to harass a patent owner. Complaints notwithstanding, the data shows just how infrequent a practice this is. The data also shows that the blame for the occasions when this…
SCOTUS Taking Case On Partial Institution Of IPRs
by Josh Landau •
One of the biggest changes coming out of the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) was the creation of the inter partes review (IPR) procedure, which allows people to challenge the validity of patents after they’ve issued. Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether an IPR can be “instituted” on only some of the…
Hiding the Patent Troll Problem with Statistics
by Matt Levy •
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) just released its long-awaited study on the consequences of patent litigation by NPEs, and we’ve been hearing story after story reporting that the report shows that there is no patent troll problem. (See here and here for examples.) It just ain’t so. The author left out a lot of patent…
Patent Fixes Pick up Steam in Congress
by Dan O'Connor •
(Cross post on DisCo) What a difference a year makes in Congress. Last year, Reps. DeFazio (D-OR) and Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act. The bill generated some attention in the press, but never made it onto the campaign year legislative agenda. Then we hit a tipping point…