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Ron Katznelson, PhD
President
Bi-Level Technologies
Dr. Ron D. Katznelson is the Founder and President of Bi-Level Technologies, an image and signal-processing technology company in Encinitas, CA. He is a technology entrepreneur, named inventor on 25 U.S. patents and applications and an independent scholar of the patent system. He authored the Amicus Brief to the US Supreme Court in Peter v. NanKwest on behalf of IEEE-USA, arguing the importance of Section 145 proceedings to applicants, and reporting on his historical study of Section 145 usage.
Dr. Katznelson also advises high technology startups; he served as the Chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee of IEEE-USA during 2019 and 2020. From 1990 to 2005, he was at Broadband Innovations, a San Diego digital RF technology company he founded, where he served as Chairman, Chief Technology Officer and a contributor to the DOCSIS® cable modem specifications. Prior to 1990, Dr. Katznelson was the Director, New Technology Development at General Instrument Corp. (GIC), where he directed the R&D in Advanced Television Systems that led to the MPEG standard; at GIC, he managed the Division’s intellectual property portfolio, patent litigation matters, and representation in industry groups and standards organizations. Prior to that, Dr. Katznelson was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
He received his doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, CA; his Masters in Applied Semiconductor Physics, and a dual BSc. degree in Mathematics and Physics, both from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He is a licensed private pilot and a licensed ham radio operator.
Recent Articles by Ron Katznelson, PhD
Why Petrella and SCA Hygiene Protect Against Equitable Defenses of Prosecution Laches
The Supreme Court rejected equitable defenses of laches in infringement suits, reasoning that by enacting a statute of limitation, Congress left no statutory “gap” for equitable judgments on timeliness. See Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (2014), and SCA Hygiene Prods. v. First Quality Baby Prods (2017). These precedential holdings should have also governed U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decisions on prosecution laches in Hyatt v. Hirshfeld (2021) and in Hyatt v. Stewart (2025), particularly after the multiple briefings in the Hyatt case on the binding effect of such holdings. Yet, nowhere in these decisions can one find any reasons why the principles in SCA Hygiene and Petrella should be inapplicable for precluding prosecution laches.
A Rebuttal Explaining the PTAB Invalidation Rate Fallacy in the GAO Reports
This is a response to Robert Grantham’s recent post titled “Patents Subjected to IPRs are the Perfect Vehicle to Assess the USPTO’s Patent Quality Problem.” This post claims to challenge my recent article titled “Fallacy Dispelled: Invalidation Rates of Adjudicated Patents Convey Nothing About Quality of All Issued Patents.” However, the post does not challenge my article, but instead falsely knocks down a strawman the post invented by mischaracterizing my article.
Fallacy Dispelled: Invalidation Rates of Adjudicated Patents Convey Nothing About Quality of All Issued Patents
About half of the patents adjudicated in district courts and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) are found invalid. It is shown here, however, that patent invalidity rates found in adjudication will necessarily range around the 50% point regardless of the underlying validity of the stock of all issued patents. Unfortunately, there are those who infer a fallacy from such adjudication statistics: that about half of all issued patents are also invalid.
Will the Federal Circuit Finally Follow Supreme Court Holdings on the Unavailability of the Laches Defense?
The Federal Circuit has held in Symbol Techs. v. Lemelson Med. that the equitable doctrine of laches could be applied to bar enforcement of a patent that issued after applicant’s unreasonable and unexplained delay in prosecution. However, later Supreme Court decisions in Petrella v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. and SCA Hygiene Prod. Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Prod., LLC render Symbol no longer viable.
A Proposal for Improving the PREVAIL Act
On July 10, 2023, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), officially introduced S. 2220 in the 118th Congress, called the “Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act,” or the PREVAIL Act. The bill is one of three patent bills that have been scheduled to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee in recent weeks. While the hearing has now been pushed twice, it is on the calendar again for Thursday, September 26.
