IP Law Bulletin

On June 12, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Oil States Energy Services LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC to decide whether the AIA (America Invents Act) patent review program for challenging the validity of issued patents is constitutional. Specifically, the Court will decide the question of “whether inter partes review – an adversarial process used by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to analyze the validity of existing patents – violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.”

Changes may be coming to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced recently that it is launching an initiative to reform PTAB proceeding rules. The announcement stated that the USPTO will use nearly five years of historical data and user experiences to improve PTAB trials. In addition to input already received, the USPTO is seeking feedback from the public (ideas for reforming PTAB proceedings can be submitted via email to PTABProceduralReformInitiative@uspto.gov).

Earlier this year, we discussed the potential ramifications of the December 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the pleading standard of infringement following the decision in Rembrandt Patent Innovations LLC v. Apple Inc. In Rembrandt, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California applied the Twombly/Iqbal standard of pleading to infringement contentions following the abrogation of Rule 84 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Form 18.

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.

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.

On August 19, 2015, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a set of proposed rule changes that affect the post-issuance patent review proceedings governed by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). As noted in a blog post announcing the release, this is the second iteration of rule changes concerning the America Invents Act (AIA)-created inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), and transitional program for covered business method patents (CBM)—the first included a few “quick fixes” enacted earlier this year. While the proposed changes have no effect until a final rulemaking in the future, the USPTO encourages practitioners to review the developments and, if inspired, participate in the comment period that is open until October 19, 2015.