Posts Tagged: "patent"

Greetings; John White here. It is time for you to “Think PCT” [Patent Cooperation Treaty] anew. If the last thing you remember hearing me say about the PCT was some pneumonic about how to ensure an International Filing Date (English Applicant Requests Priority Designation!), or how to calculate an old Section 102(e) date under the FOoT/DUSE  (Fee Oath Translation/ Designate United States (publish in) English) Rule for the Patent Bar Exam: good, you still remember it! You’ve put off senility a little further by keeping these things circulating in your steel-trap like brain! (Sadly, my voice is probably still rattling around in there as well, I suppose. Sorry about that…) But, let’s move on; it is now time to really understand the use and implementation of a PCT strategy in the modern era. The world is changing rapidly!

This week, district courts saw 91 new complaints, a large portion filed by IP Edge subsidiaries, such as Karetek Holdings, LLC; Guada Technologies; Tunnel IP, LLC; Altair Logix, LLC; Coretek Licensing, LLC; and Raindrops Licensing, LLC, with the rest being Intellectual Ventures selloffs, company-to-company disputes (like the Skull Shaver, LLC v. Freedom Grooming design patent case), and some pharmaceutical filings.

There were 17 discretionary denials under Section 325; 41 PTAB petitions filed—one post grant review (PGR) and 40 inter partes reviews (IPRs)—a number buttressed largely by Amazon filing seven IPRs against VB Assets, LLC – an assertion vehicle apparently spun out of AI-voice company, VoiceBox, after Nuance purchased them last year – as well as Samsung filing five IPRs against Clear Imaging Research, LLC, an entity run by the former co-founder of Soryn IP. This was rounded out by a five-IPR battle between Monolitic Power Systems and Volterra Semiconductor over licensing semiconductor technology.

On January 9, 2019, Moderna Therapeutics, Inc. (“Moderna”) filed a petition requesting inter partes review of U.S. Patent No. 8,058,069 (the ‘069 patent) owned by Arbutus Biopharma. The ‘069 patent is directed to lipid nanoparticle technology, the same technology that Moderna is using in its efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted review, but in their decision last week, determined that Moderna had not shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that claims 1-22 of the ‘069 patent are unpatentable under 35 USC § 103.

Much has been written about the uncertainty in U.S. patent law concerning laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice Corp Pty Ltd v. CLS Bank Int’l. A recent decision from the Enlarged Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (the Enlarged Board), however, demonstrates that the United States is not alone in grappling with issues surrounding patent eligibility. In the case of genetically modified plants and animals, questions arise on where to draw the line between human invention and biological processes. Earlier this year, the Enlarged Board reversed a 2015 decision that had held that product-by-process patents could be sought for genetically modified plants and animals despite a patent exclusion for “essentially biological processes.” 

On August 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) denied a petition for rehearing en banc and issued a modified opinion, following a petition for rehearing filed by Ariosa in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. Sticking closely to the reasoning of its March opinion, the CAFC reversed a decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California that claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,580,751 (the ’751 patent) and 9,738,931 (the ’931 patent) belonging to Sequenom and Illumina (Illumina) were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to an ineligible natural phenomenon.

In Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, of our Constitution, the founders were relatively specific. The founders give Congress power to secure “the exclusive Right” to “Authors and Inventors” in the “Writings and Discoveries”. Congress is given  specific direction on how to do it (i.e., “for Limited Times”), and why it should be done (i.e., “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”). Unfortunately, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 dramatically changed how the Executive branch implements the Constitutional prerogative.  The AIA transferred power constitutionally allocated to the judicial branch to the executive branch – specifically, to Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) in the USPTO. In the process of implementing the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) on which the APJs sit, judicial independence, judicial ethics, rules of evidence, and other protections commonly afforded rights holders in disputes adjudicated by the federal judiciary were sacrificed in the name of expediency.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued Orders granting a request for panel rehearing and denying a request for rehearing en banc in response to a joint petition filed by American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM). The CAFC also issued a precedential modified opinion of its October 3, 2019 opinion in American Axle & Manufacturing v. Neapco Holdings. In the Order Denying Rehearing En Banc, Judges Newman, Moore, O’Malley, Reyna, Lourie and Stoll dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. Each of Dyk, Chen, Newman, Stoll and O’Malley wrote separately.

There is a symbiotic relationship between innovation and patents. The innovation that we say we most want is cutting-edge innovation that requires time, money and determination to bring into being.Unfortunately, paradigm shifting innovation does not come cheap. And patents are the lifeblood of this type of disruptive innovation. Those within the industry know this to be the case, and today the Alliance of U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs (USIJ) released a report detailing a comprehensive study that confirms the importance of patents and the consequences of a patent system in the United States that has veered away from strong protections for innovators and toward rules and laws that make it ever easier for implementers to copy the innovations of creators without remuneration.

On Thursday, July 30, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Commissioner for Patents Drew Hirshfeld and other USPTO staff updated attendees of IPWatchdog and LexisNexis’ webinar, “A Conversation with the Commissioner: A Look Inside Patent Processes at the USPTO,” on issues such as staffing, reopening plans, and upcoming new processes for routing patent applications.

The Supreme Court is currently considering several pleas to review the holding in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew I and Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew II in the form of four petitions for writs of certiorari: U.S. v Arthrex, No. 19-1434, Smith & Nephew v. Arthrex, No. 19-1452, Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, No. 19-1458, and Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, No. 19-1204.  Recently, there has been an uptick in activity in the various cases, with Arthrex most recently filing response briefs in two cases and amicus brief filed by Askeladden LLC and the New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA) in U.S. v Arthrex.

On July 29, Askeladden LLC filed an amicus brief in support of the U.S. Government’s combined petition for a writ of certiorari in U.S. v. Arthrex, Inc., No. 19-1434. In particular, Askeladden asks the Supreme Court to accept the petition and address the threshold question raised by the U.S. Government: whether, for purposes of the Appointments Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, Cl. 2, administrative patent judges (APJs) of the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are “principal officers” who must be appointed by the President with the Senate’s advice and consent, or “inferior officers” whose appointment Congress has permissibly vested in a department head.

The Federal Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that found FanDuel had failed to prove that claim 6 of Interactive Games’ U.S. Patent No. 8,771,058, was obvious in view of the asserted prior art. FanDuel, Inc. v. Interactive Games, LLC (CAFC, July 29, 2020). FanDuel appealed to the Federal Circuit on the ground that the PTAB violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and also challenged its factual findings. Judge Dyk dissented in part, saying he would have found the claim obvious, and that the obviousness standard used by the PTAB was overly rigid and not in the spirit of KSR v. Teleflex.

On July 24, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas that a State asserting sovereign immunity could not be joined as an involuntary plaintiff, but dissented from the district court’s holding that the case could not proceed in the State’s absence. Gensetix, Inc. v. Baylor College of Medicine. Judges Newman and Taranto each wrote separately in partially dissenting from different aspects of the majority’s opinion.

There was a spike in Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings this week—almost double the average, at 56—driven in part by eight new petitions (adding to those previously filed) against patents owned by the Moskowitz family by Globus Medical. That was good enough to rival newly filed complaints for the first time this year (57). It also appears Uniloc (Fortress) and Samsung have come to some sort of agreement, as a handful of pending inter partes reviews (IPRs) settled; Samsung was denied institution in all of the IPRs it has filed against Cellect to date (eight petitions, with 12 still pending—at least some patents have no remaining challenges, meaning the litigation is sure to continue in due course).

Former Senator Robert Dole turned 97 last week, but he’s still very much engaged in what’s going on right now. He just wrote a powerful op-ed, Innovation is key to defeating COVID-19. Subtitled “Enacted 40 years ago, the Bayh-Dole Act is helping facilitate the development of coronavirus therapies today,” Senator Dole reviews how the law he crafted with former Senator Birch Bayh revolutionized the commercialization of federally-funded inventions. Bayh-Dole paved the way for companies like Moderna to create critically needed therapies to combat our raging pandemic. But there’s another message Senator Dole delivered that’s just as topical.