Posts Tagged: covered business methods
PTO Proposes Rulemaking to Implement Phillips Claim Construction at PTAB
Earlier today the USPTO announced proposed rulemaking that would change the prior policy of using the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation (BRI) standard for construing unexpired and proposed amended …
Patent Review in an Article I Tribunal is Unconstitutional Under the Public Rights Doctrine
This experiment in patent validity review an executive agency by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, an Article I tribunal in the PTO, has been unsuccessful...The …
Five Years after the AIA Created the PTAB
I want to believe Congress ultimately sought to strengthen the U.S. patent system with the AIA by providing a mechanism to more easily remove a small …
The Increasingly Powerful PTAB: Underutilized Precedential Designations Undermines Efficiency and Consistency
The PTO has increased the number of Board decisions as being precedential (so as to serve as a binding authority) by 36% within the last two years. With …
The only solution for the transgressions of the PTAB is to disband this runaway tribunal
Hiring senior associates to be Administrative Patent Judges was a mistake, hiring so many senior associates from the same firm was an even bigger mistake. Making it …
Federal Government Not Barred from Petition for CBM Review
In a case of first impression, a majority of a Federal Circuit panel held that the U.S. Postal Service and the United States (collectively, “USPS”) were …
Federal Circuit upholds CBM instituted in conflict with Unwired Planet decision
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Return Mail, Inc. v. United States Postal Services (USPS), which affirmed a finding …
Federal Circuit says U.S. government is a ‘person’, can file CBM to challenge patents
the Federal Circuit also upheld a controversial ruling of the PTAB, which determined that the United States has standing to bring a CBM challenge. Legally speaking, the …
Federal Circuit Affirms CBM Unpatentability Holding; Finding Estoppel Did Not Apply
In Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs. the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) in a Covered Business Method (“CBM”) …
En Banc Federal Circuit Dodges PTAB Constitutionality
Patlex, which dealt with reexamination of applications by an examiner — not by an Article I tribunal — could be considered a next step beyond McCormick. MCM, however, simply …
Is the ethical bar for practitioners higher than it is for PTAB judges?
Had APJ Clements not been a member of the PTAB and one of the patent owners – let’s say Smartflash for example – had come to him and …
If PTAB judges can decide cases involving former defense clients USPTO conflict rules must change
If an APJ making decisions in a case within 18 months of having represented a former client complies with whatever USPTO conflict rules or guidelines apply to PTAB …
Fundamental incongruities of PTAB operations affect the integrity of the patent system
For more than two centuries, the U.S. Constitution, black letter law and precedent construed a patent as a property right. This is important because it is …
Are conflicts of interest at the PTAB leading to preferential decisions for Apple?
The lead APJ serving on the panel of multiple CBM reviews petitioned by Apple, who also wrote the final written decision on at least one CBM review …
The Top 3 Reasons the U.S. Patent System in Decline
Concerns over software and biotechnological innovations being patent eligible, the omnipresent threat of patent reform that could make it even more difficult to enforce the patent property …
