Patent Filings Roundup: Another Slow Week in the Courts; Discretionary Denials Drop to Near-Zero in Q3

It was another surprisingly light week in patent filings, compared at least with recent memory—just 29 new suits and 17 new filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), all inter partes reviews (IPRs). The filings include a few challenges against patents asserted by the Fortress-funded Neo Wireless and Netlist, as well as a slew of filings by Apple against Mullin Industries, LLC. After a week’s respite there were five new IP Edge suits—not as many as usual, but still enough to represent almost a fifth of all suits filed this week. Hilco added even more Bell Semiconductor suits; Raymond Anthony Joao filed against more health care subsidiaries in his Decapolis campaign.  Equitable added a few defendants to the Communication Interface Technologies LLC IoT suit, and VideoLabs sued HP over video compression technology. Otherwise, it was a quiet week.

Perhaps most interesting, and most relevant, is our review of discretionary denial data for Q3, though, which shows that there was only one use of Section 314(d) discretionary denial in the entire third quarter of 2022—i.e., the three months following the release of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal’s clarification memorandum on the application of Fintiv. Interestingly, that denial was in a case where the patent was, after the IPR was filed, ruled on as invalid under Section 101; the Board exercised their discretion and then the Director sua sponte ordered an Arthrex review, which is still pending.

There have also been just two Section 325(d) denials over the same time period. Last year saw roughly 50 discretionary denials over the same time period. 

PTAB (17)

District Court (29)

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Author: lightsource