Posts Tagged: "patent"

Judge Alan Albright’s Western District of Texas courtroom in Waco, Texas is the preferred venue for patent cases and the new patent rocket docket. Prior to Judge Albright taking the bench, patent cases filed in Waco were scarce, but since Albright taking the bench, patent cases have exploded. Through November 23, 2020, 3,863  patent cases have been filed nationwide. Of that number, nearly 791  have been filed in Judge Albright’s court.

On November 19, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Vectura Limited v. GlaxoSmithKline LLC in which the court affirmed a judgment entered against GSK finding that Ellipta-brand inhalers infringed patent claims asserted by Vectura. On appeal, GSK had argued that it was entitled to new trials on infringement and damages, but the Federal Circuit disagreed.

On November 20, the Federal Circuit issued a modified opinion following a petition for panel rehearing filed by Network-1. The petition came after the CAFC affirmed-in-part and reversed-in-part a district court’s claim construction and remanded the case to the district court on September 24, 2020, in Network-1 Technologies, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Company. In the revised opinion, the CAFC said that it would not consider Network-1’s alternative grounds for granting a judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on validity nor its new trial motion in the first instance.

The Federal Circuit reversed a district court finding that an inventor of water park surfing attractions breached his employment agreement and that his co-inventor was improperly listed as an inventor. The CAFC based the decision on its best prediction of how the California Supreme Court would interpret state law as applied to the case, applying the “employment contracts in a manner highly protective of former employees”.

I am going to make a bold statement: every non-provisional patent application for an invention originating in the U.S. should be filed via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) first. Then, after another six months, following the international search, and PCT publication, those who desire U.S. patents should enter the U.S. National Stage. That’s right: every single application, no exceptions. No, I have not lost my mind. Here’s why.

A key issue of discussion with respect to the Brazilian patent system has to do with patents granted by the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) under the following sole paragraph of Article 40 of the Brazilian IP Law: “Article 40 – The term of a patent for an invention shall be 20 (twenty) years and for a utility model 15 (fifteen) years as from the filing date. Sole Paragraph – The term shall not be less than 10 (ten) years for inventions and 7 (seven) years for utility models, as from the date of grant, except where INPI is prevented from carrying out the substantive examination of the application due to pending litigation or for reasons beyond its control.” This provision guarantees that patentees enjoy a 20-year term from filing and is particularly relevant due to the considerable examination backlog at the BPTO.

On November 17 the Federal Circuit affirmed a determination of the PTAB that claims were obvious in view of the prior art in an appeal that was returned to the CAFC on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court. In particular, the CAFC concluded that, according to the recent Supreme Court decision in Thryv, Inc. v. Click-to-Call Technologies, LP, “§ 324(e) prohibits judicial review of SIPCO’s challenge because it is nothing more than a contention that the agency should have refused to institute [covered business method] CBM review.”

It was a light week for Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings, with just 18 new petitions, while the district courts remained busy with 71 new complaints. Some patent filings were new additions to existing assertion campaigns like Virtual Immersion [Equitable], Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., or Browse3D; at least six new filings by Viking Technologies, LLC seem to spring from a supplier relationship with smartphone repair services, detailed below.

While researching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) treatment of final Office actions for previous articles (Part I, Part II and Part III), we noticed too many petition decisions dismissed as moot for it to have happened by chance. Here in Part IV, we examine timely filed petitions that were dismissed as moot because the USPTO decision was inexplicably delayed to such an extent that applicants were forced to take other action to avoid abandonment of their applications. We uncover two different and seemingly arbitrary petition processing pathways within the USPTO: petitions which are promptly entered and decided on their merits or petitions belatedly entered and eventually dismissed as moot. We uncover a strong correlation between the USPTO’s initial petition processing steps, petition pendency and petition outcome. 

On November 16, the U.S. Supreme Court denied petitions for certiorari in two cases from the Federal Circuit: IYM Technologies LLC v. RPX Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and WhitServe LLC v. Donuts Inc. IYM asked the Supreme Court to grant review “to determine whether the Arthrex decision applies to all appeals that were pending when [the Arthrex decision] issued.” In the WhitServe petition, WhitServe asserted that a determination of patent ineligibility “necessitates impermissible fact-weighing at the pleading stage and eviscerates the statutory presumption of validity.”

Since U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu took office, I have observed, with admiration, how he has taken bold action to improve perceived problems in the patent system. The Director’s bold action has also caught the attention of members of the Supreme Court. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, observed, “[n]or has the Director proven bashful about asserting these statutory powers to secure the [policy judgments] he seeks.”
Oil States Energy v. Greene’s Energy Group, 138 S.Ct. 1365, 1381 (2018) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting).

I wonder, however, whether the law now permits Director Iancu to do something even bolder: create rules interpreting Section 101, at least within the limited context of the America Invents Act’s (AIA’s) post-grant review trials, such that courts may defer to the Director’s interpretation under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984).

On November 13, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the Board in In re: Google Technology Holdings LLC. In particular, the CAFC upheld a decision of the Board affirming a patent examiner’s final rejection and holding that Google forfeited the arguments put forth on appeal. Google’s U.S. Patent Application No. 15/179,765 was directed to “distributed caching for video-on-demand systems, and in particular to a method and apparatus for transferring content within such video- on-demand systems.” During prosecution, the examiner finally rejected the claims of the ‘795 application as being obvious under Section 103.

This is the third in a series of articles analyzing statements made by various entities in the cellular industry regarding licensing Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) on a Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) basis. The previous article considered unconditional offers to license on a FRAND basis, arbitration of FRAND terms and conditions, specific FRAND rates, the application of such rates, and portfolio licensing. This article focuses on statements regarding the FRAND royalty base.

Last week, an order list issued by the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that the nation’s highest court had granted a pair of petitions for writ of certiorari which were then consolidated into Davis v. Saul. The petition in Davis asks the Supreme Court to determine whether claimants seeking disability benefits or supplemental security income under the Social Security Act (SSA) must exhaust their Appointments Clause challenges with the administrative law judge (ALJ) at the agency in order to obtain judicial review of that challenge in federal court. Given the Appointments Clause challenge to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings at issue in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, many patent practitioners are interested in the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision on whether such challenges can be brought up for the first time on appeal from agency proceedings when parties first claim that constitutional challenge while seeking judicial review in federal courts.