Posts in Government

Following a July petition for writ of certiorari filed by Kahoot AS! asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) “settled expectations” doctrine for denying inter partes review (IPR) requests is authorized under the patent statute, the PTAB Bar Association and other amici this past week have urged the Court to take up…

Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) has introduced a bill to amend the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, inspired by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) Judge Pauline Newman’s fight to restore her status as an active judge, following a three-year suspension of her duties initiated by CAFC Chief Judge Kimberly Moore.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in In re Incept LLC, vacating and remanding a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that had affirmed an examiner’s rejection of a medical catheter patent application as obvious. Since the Board’s obviousness analysis relied on an incorrect construction of the claim term “flow barrier,” the CAFC declined to reach the underlying obviousness question and returned the case to the Board for further proceedings.

Sources familiar with operations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have told IPWatchdog that USPTO Director John Squires has informed the Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that he will be relinquishing decision-making authority on which patent challenges to institute, returning the decision to the PTAB. 

Congress should let provisional applications be renewable for an extra year, and then publish them if a nonprovisional is not filed. Filing a nonprovisional is a big deal for small businesses. In some cases the expense pays off because it lets inventors recover from infringers, while in others it does not pay off because the market never develops. Under today’s law, the decision is mostly all or nothing—spend large amounts of money on attorney and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) fees, or compete in the market without protection.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Guymon v. Squires, affirming a decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissing with prejudice an inventor’s lawsuit challenging a patent term adjustment (PTA) determination. Circuit Judge Hughes wrote for the court, joined by Chief Judge Moore and Circuit Judge Lourie, and rejected each of the three arguments that Guymon raised on appeal.

Yesterday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released its 2026 Global Innovation Index (GII) identifying metropolitan clusters around the world seeing the highest levels of innovation activity as judged by publications and R&D investments. This year’s Index underscores the growing tech dominance of China, which accounted for one-quarter of the top 100 innovation clusters in this year’s survey of top tech and innovation hubs around the world.

Under 35 U.S.C. Section 256, one can only correct an inventorship error when the underlying facts and the affected parties can actually be identified, and when the statutory correction procedure can be completed. AI-assisted invention is starting to produce cases where none of that is possible: the development record shows plenty of human activity, but nothing in it establishes which person actually conceived the claimed invention. After Fortress Iron, LP v. Digger Specialties, Inc., No. 2024-2313 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 2, 2026, that kind of gap can turn into a validity problem, not just a paperwork one.

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling in Vieth v. MOM Enterprises, LLC affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) invalidation of Elaine and Dr. Reinhold Veith’s patent claims to methods of administering vitamin D to human beings. The Federal Circuit agreed that most of the claim construction and prior art arguments raised by the Vieths on appeal were forfeited for not being properly developed in the proceedings below, and also dismissed the Vieths’ contentions that they had established nexus between industry praise for its products and the challenged method claims.

On September 1, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Statement of Interest urging the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hold that using copyrighted written works to train large language models (LLMs) is fair use, arguing that a contrary result would distort copyright law, suppress innovation and weaken U.S. competitiveness and national security. The statement was filed in reference to the multidistrict copyright litigation against OpenAI, although it specifically addressed claims by The New York Times and said its reasoning also applies to the related cases involving book authors and publishers.

The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet held an oversight hearing today to consider its role in renewing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) fee setting authority. Throughout the hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) expressed skepticism about USPTO Director John Squires’ recent changes to discretionary denial practice at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and wondered whether renewal of such authority under the America Invents Act (AIA) should be conditioned on reforms to the agency’s policy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today in Netlist, Inc. v. Micron Technology, Inc., affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision that found all challenged claims of a Netlist computer memory patent unpatentable as obvious. The court rejected Netlist’s arguments that the Board’s findings lacked substantial evidentiary support and that the Board violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in reaching its conclusions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday handed SpaceTime3D, Inc. mixed results in two nonprecedential decisions involving graphical user interface patents challenged by Apple Inc. and Google LLC, with the outcomes turning largely on differences in the wording of related claims. In Apple Inc., Google LLC  v. SpaceTime3D, Inc., the court affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision upholding claims 1-13 of U.S. Patent No. 8,881,048 but finding claims 14-18 obvious. In a separate appeal, SpaceTime3D, Inc. v. Apple Inc., Google LLC, the CAFC affirmed the Board’s determination that all challenged claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,304,654 and 9,696,868 were obvious.

On Friday, an amicus brief was filed at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of major trade associations in the computer software, automotive, retail and other industries, urging the Court to grant Tesla’s petition for writ of certiorari following the denial of its petitions for inter partes review (IPR) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) challenging patent claims owned by self-driving technology company Granite Vehicle Ventures. The industry groups claim that the Court’s review is necessary to address so-called “patent trolls” and policies adopted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that effectively eliminate the use of IPRs to combat these allegedly bad actors.