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…
This Saturday, September 15, 2017, marks the five-year anniversary of the first filing of an inter partes review. We’ve seen nearly 7,000 post-grant reviews filed since then, a Supreme Court case dealing with IPRs, and there are a pair of IPR Supreme Court cases up this term. [Oil States] [SAS] Over the next few weeks,…
Last week, the Federal Circuit handed down a decision in Visual Memory v. NVIDIA, deciding that the Visual Memory1 cache patents are patent-eligible under § 101. Unfortunately, in doing so the Federal Circuit makes the same mistake they’ve made a few times now—they’ve looked at the specification, not the claims, in order to justify finding…
One of the most important developments over the past few years is the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank – a decision that articulated a distinction between patent-eligible inventions, and patent-ineligible abstract ideas. The Alice decision has enabled many companies, including small businesses, to defend themselves from baseless patent infringement lawsuits based on…
The recent House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the Impact of Bad Patents on American Businesses addressed many of the points I made last week. But it also highlighted a few issues where there’s some dispute or simply a lack of understanding. In particular, I think that the hearing’s focus on the (1) “broadest reasonable interpretation”…
On July 6, the Computer and Communications Industry Association submitted comments on America Invents Act (AIA) trial procedures in response to the PTO’s ongoing request for such feedback, most recently at the PTAB Judicial Conference in June. Our comments, briefly summarized, are that: The inter partes review (IPR) procedure has been successful in providing an…
Tomorrow morning, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet is holding a hearing on “The Impact of Bad Patents on American Businesses.” The impact of bad patents is a topic worth taking some time to examine, because it isn’t just about the direct impact from abusive troll litigation—bad patents…
You hear a lot about patent litigation in district courts. And, over the past several years, the new inter partes review procedure has seen a lot of attention (including last week’s renewed effort to try to kill off the single most effective tool we have for invalidating bad patents.) You don’t hear that much about…
Yesterday, Senator Coons introduced his STRONGER Patents Act. Senator Coons provided a section-by-section description of the bill, as well as the text of the bill. And after reading it, I have some concerns. Patent Progress previously covered Senator Coons’ STRONG Patents Act. Much of STRONG Patents wound up in STRONGER Patents, and our analysis back…
TC Heartland continues to impact the world of patent litigation. I haven’t run the numbers yet on what’s happened since the decision came down, but just having read through the list of cases filed, the Eastern District of Texas certainly has seen a reduction in cases filed. Tomorrow morning, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on…
