IP Law Bulletin

Earlier last month, Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Michelle Lee announced the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative to increase the clarity of issued patents so as to ensure that patent holders and potential users are better informed of the full scope of the patents’ rights when making important business decisions. The initial programs under this initiative will include:

The America Invents Act (AIA) introduced several changes to inventor oath/declaration practice that took effect in 2012.  One such change is the ability to incorporate an inventor’s required declaration statements into an assignment document, thereby reducing the number of documents that must be executed by an inventor in connection with filing a patent application.  If an applicant elects to go this route, a single combined declaration and assignment document can be recorded at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and a copy will be automatically placed in the application’s file wrapper.  It appears to be the case, however, that this automatic copying by the USPTO of the combined declaration and assignment into the file wrapper for an application triggers a Notice of Incomplete Reply if there is an outstanding Notice to File Missing Parts or Notice to File Corrected Application Papers that identifies a deficiency in addition to the lack of an oath/declaration—despite the fact that the applicant has not made any reply to such a notice.

Last week the Federal Circuit denied Sequenom’s petition for rehearing en banc to review patent eligibility of their cell-free fetal DNA patent, U.S. Pat. No 6,258,540 (the ’540 Patent).  The District Court found the ’540 Patent invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to ineligible subject matter under the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Mayo v. Prometheus Laboratories, 132 S. Ct. 1298 (2012). The Federal Circuit affirmed and Sequenom filed the petition for rehearing en banc.

Now that our readers have had their fill of turkey and all the fixings, they can gorge on an abundance of patent petitions data. Earlier this year, Director of the USPTO Michelle Lee announced a new public, user-friendly tool to obtain information about the abundance and success rate of petitions of every nature. The information generally includes:

• The average number of days a petition is pending before a decision is made;

• The grant rate for a petition; and

• The office within the USPTO that makes the decision on the petition.

Earlier this fall the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced the “Streamlined, Expedited Patent Appeal Pilot for Small Entities” program (the Streamlined, Expedited program), which allows small and micro entities to expedite a single ex parte patent appeal pending before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board). In order to take advantage of this program, a patent applicant must:

• Be a small or micro entity appellant;

• Have only a single ex parte patent appeal pending before the Board as of September 18, 2015;

• Have no claim involved in the appeal that can be subject to a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112;

• For each ground of rejection that is applied to more than one claim, select a single claim as representative and only discuss that claim in the appeal for that ground;

• Agree to waive any requested oral hearing; and

• Acknowledge that any oral hearing fees paid in connection with the appeal will not be refunded.

Summary: While the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) brought sweeping changes to the United States patent system, including moving to a first-to-file system and implementing and modifying a number of post-grant proceeding options, one less heralded change is the expansion of the third party preissuance submission process, by which a third party can submit prior art references in a pending U.S. patent application for consideration by the examiner. The revised preissuance submission process is significantly more robust and accessible than its pre-AIA counterpart. Key features of the process such as low cost, anonymity, and preclusion from estoppels make it a potentially attractive tool for challenging pending applications. However, a third party’s participation in the patent prosecution process is still limited and the submitted references may even inadvertently strengthen any patent that issues from the application in which the submission is filed. Accordingly, third parties should carefully consider the limitations and risks associated with the process before filing a preissuance submission.

In the beginning of October, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it is extending two programs that patent applicants find useful in the later stages of prosecution—the After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0 (AFCP) and the Quick Path Information Disclosure Statement (QPIDS) programs.

On August 28 and September 15, 2015, certain asserted claims of Exergen’s United States Patent No. 7,787,938 (the "'938 patent") were found invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 on two separate summary judgment motions. See Exergen Corp. v. Brooklands Inc. ("Brooklands"), No. 12-cv-12243-DPW (August 28, 2015) and Exergen Corp. v. Thermomedics, Inc. ("Thermomedics"), No. 13-cv-11243-DJC (September 15, 2015). The claims of the '938 patent at issue are directed to diagnostic methods for measuring body temperature based upon radiation and temperature measurements taken at the temporal artery at the side of the forehead. Readers, particularly with children, will recognize the Exergen thermometer as a popular tool for taking kids’ temperatures.

Recently, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”), issued an informative decision in Apotex Inc., v. Wyeth, LLC, IPR2015-00873 (“the ‘873 IPR”), providing insight into how the Board will apply estoppel under 35 U.S.C. §315(e)(1) and exercise its discretion under 35 U.S.C. §325(d). Previously, Apotex filed an IPR petition, IPR2014-00115 (“the ‘115 IPR”), against the same patent at issue in the ‘873 IPR, which resulted in the issuance of a Final Written Decision. In view of the Final Written Decision in the ‘115 IPR, the patent owner asserted that Apotex was estopped from “requesting inter partes review because the asserted grounds are based on prior art that the petitioner ‘was aware of, cited and relied upon [in the previous] ‘115 IPR.’” Finding that the preconditions for §315(e)(1) estoppel applied, the Board found that the petitioner was estopped from raising one of the two asserted grounds. No estoppel applied to the other ground, however, because the ground was merely raised, but not instituted on, in the earlier proceeding.

Last week, a sharply divided Federal Circuit, acting en banc (6-5), decided SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC to the delight of accused infringers. Laches remains a defense to damage claims in patent infringement cases, even for damages sustained within six years before filing suit, despite the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., which eliminated that defense for damage claims in copyright cases. The Federal Circuit also overruled prior precedent and held that laches may bar prospective injunctive relief. As a result, patent owners should put alleged infringers on notice and not wait to pursue their claims.