Dolly Krishnaswamy

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Laying the Groundwork for a Reflective IP Strategy

“Without a strong healthy business nothing else really matters–not even IP. A successful IP [plan] is one that follows the business and strategizes to meet its goals,” says Cynthia Raposo, Senior Vice President of Underarmour. The questions that need to be answered that go into formulating an intellectual property strategy–like when the company wants a profit, whether it is interested in attracting investors or academic collaborations or buyers, whether it will become a public or global company, what its niche in the market is, how fast developments in the field are– can’t be fully answered without not only consulting the business people, but being on the exact same page as them.

Post Grant Challenges: Strategic and Procedural Considerations

There are several varieties of a stay. With post grant proceedings we’re talking mostly about discretionary stay. Every district court has inherent right to do this. Judges are generally favorable to granting stays with more being granted than not. “All a judge has to do is get burned once by not granting a stay, going to trial to the end, and then having claims invalidated by the Board and then having to have an appeal,” says John J. Marshall, law professor at Villanova University School of Law, previously Of Counsel at Drinker Biddle. The initial stay before a petition is granted is short. Then after the petition is granted, the district court judges are more likely to grant a stay, because IPR will simplify issues that might be important to the district court judge. That quick timeline is one of the factors that helps you get a stay for concurrent litigation and getting ammunition for use in district court claim construction. In fact, you may find that these factors are so persuasive that if a defendant in district court case files a petition for IPR, and you, as another defendant, can’t join because you are past the one month joinder cutoff, you still may be asked to stay your case until other defendant’s IPR concludes. As of October 2013, contested stay motions pending IPR petitions have a 68.5 percent grant rate and those pending CBM petitions have an 83 percent grant rate, according to a Finnegan infographic based on the published PTO AIA statistics. Those are really good rates. It’s something to consider even in districts like Delaware or East Texas.