Understanding the Impact of IPR Estoppel and PTAB Discretionary Denials — Patents: Post-Grant Podcast
New Developments in Obviousness-Type Double Patenting and Original Patent Requirements — Patents: Post-Grant Podcast
Inter Partes Review: Validity Before the PTAB
Purdue Pharma (Purdue) has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari challenging a recent Federal Circuit decision upholding the invalidation of several Purdue patents on grounds of obviousness....more
On June 30, 2025, Perceptix filed suit against Meta Platforms for infringement of U.S. Patent 8,498,439, which describes a headphone that turns on when it is worn. The ‘439 Patent is assigned to the Electronics and...more
On June 30, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a decision by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) and remanded the case for further proceedings using a narrower construction of the...more
As the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the Acting USPTO Director refocus challengers, and with them Patent Owners, towards reexamination from inter partes review proceedings, the need to understand the nuance of “new” in...more
The Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in In re: Xencor, Inc.concerning written support for Jepson claims. The decision affirms the decision of the Appeals Review Panel (ARP) of the USPTO, which held that the...more
The proliferation of artificial intelligence (“AI”) presents complex challenges for intellectual property, especially within patent law. In particular, the obviousness inquiry under 35 U.S.C. § 103 may be susceptible to...more
In the mid-2000s, the U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) determined that reexaminations would be more consistent and legally correct if performed by a centralized set of experienced and specially trained Examiners. As a result, the...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) Acting Director’s recent decision to deny institution of inter partes review (“IPR”) in iRhythm Technologies Inc. v. Welch Allyn Inc. offers valuable lessons for both patent...more
Patent attorneys are well-versed in the function of the Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) during prosecution. We understand that listing prior art in an IDS satisfies the duty of candor, helps insulate patents from...more
On April 22, 2025, the Federal Circuit issued a decision In re: Bonnie Iris McDonald Floyd that underscores a critical and often overlooked risk in design patent prosecution: relying on a utility patent application for...more
In its recent In re Floyd opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision by Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to reject a design applicant’s priority claim to an earlier utility filing for...more
One year ago today, the en banc Federal Circuit decided LKQ Corporation v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, where it overturned the decades-old Rosen-Durling test for obviousness of a design patent for being “improperly...more
On March 13, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in the case of In Re: Xencor, Inc. In this Appeal from the Appeals Review Panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (ARP), with regard to...more
Requesters should make sure to double cite to non-provisional and provisional if they require a provisional filing date for prior art....more
Recent changes at the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) have brought uncertainty to inter partes review and post-grant review practitioners before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). These procedural and...more
In re: Forest, No. 2023-1178 (Fed. Cir. (PTAB) Apr. 3, 2025). Opinion by Chen, joined by Taranto and Schall. In 2016, an inventor filed a patent application that claimed priority to an application filed in 1995. The Patent...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal from a patent applicant seeking provisional rights on a patent that would issue only after it had already expired, finding that the applicant lacked the...more
On March 24, the Federal Circuit held in In re Riggs that for a published non-provisional patent application to be prior art under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)(1) based on an earlier provisional filing date, all citations to...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed a district court ruling that a pharmaceutical dosing claim limitation was unpatentable due to obviousness-type double patenting. The court found...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit established a more demanding test for determining whether a published patent application claiming priority to a provisional application is considered prior art under pre-America...more
Last week a remarkably interesting Federal Circuit case was decided concerning whether an asserted reference was properly shown to qualify as prior art in the rejection of a pending patent application. The pending application...more
In re: Riggs, Appeal No. 2022-1945 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 24, 2025) Our Case of the Week explores the power of an examiner to request a rehearing after the Board has entered a decision on an application. The case also relates to...more
This article continues our analysis of over 89,000 patents to determine how the number of office actions to allowance during prosecution impacts litigation outcomes. Last month we discussed how prosecution length impacts...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court decision rejecting claims of a patent application directed to a dosing regimen for a cancer treatment, finding the claims to be obvious where the...more
After creating something of a frisson due to the apprehension that the Federal Circuit might be convinced to re-evaluate whether it was a necessary element for establishing obviousness for the skilled artisan to have had a...more