Posts Tagged: "inventor"

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) invited ALE USA Inc. to respond to Chrimar System Inc.’s petition for rehearing en banc. Five amici consisting of inventors and intellectual property advocates have now filed amicus curiae briefs  in support of Chrimar and the petition for rehearing. In September, the CAFC affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision in Chrimar Systems, Inc. v. ALE that rendered a previously affirmed jury verdict null and void. The heavily contested decision found the PTAB, an executive administrative agency, vacating the judicial verdict of an Article III court. According to FedCircuitBlog, there are currently 17 pending petitions for en banc rehearing with the Federal Circuit, while 22 petitions have been denied between August and November 2019. Of the 22 petitions denied, nine included a call for response, or 41% of denied petitions. Thus, while not a sure indicator that the court will grant the petition, the court’s invitation for response in Chrimar is at least a necessary step toward that goal. Here is what the amici are saying.

As most of us know by now, in Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., entered on Halloween 2019, a panel of the Federal Circuit held that the administrative patent judges (APJs) of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) were improperly appointed, and remanded the case for a new decision by a properly appointed panel. Almost immediately after, the court entered two orders dismissing motions for remand because the issue had not been timely raised. See Customedia Technologies, LLC v. Dish Network Corp., Nos. 18-2239 & 19-1001 (Fed. Cir., Nov. 1, 2019) (the motions were inferred from letters to the court). The Federal Circuit remanded a case in which the issue had been timely raised. Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Facebook, Inc., No. 18-2251 (Fed. Cir., Oct. 31, 2019). Predictions about the effect on pending cases overlook that the vast majority of PTAB final decisions come in appeals from the patent examining corps. Any of the hundreds of applicants dissatisfied with a recent PTAB appeal decision could appeal to the Federal Circuit and then promptly move for remand to a different panel. A reader could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu: in In re DBC, the Federal Circuit similarly found that APJs had been improperly appointed, but the issue was quickly resolved and now is remembered as a minor footnote in patent case law. In re DBC, 545 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Arthrex holds the potential to be far more significant. Indeed, Arthrex may prove more trick than treat.

Jury verdicts are supposed to be sacrosanct. The biggest opposition to the ratification of our Constitution in 1788 was due to its lack of protection for jury trials in civil cases. The omission was corrected by adding the Seventh Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights. So, when a patent holder wins a jury verdict, that should mean more than the paper the verdict is written on. Yet it does not, under recent decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. On behalf of Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, I filed an amicus brief on November 4 in support of a petition for rehearing en banc by the full Federal Circuit to end the abusive authority of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to overturn jury verdicts. Many other amicus briefs were subsequently filed in this case, Chrimar Systems, Inc. v. ALE USA, Inc. FKA Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise USA, Inc. (Fed. Circ. Case No. 18-2420), to make similar requests of the Federal Circuit

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Trump Administration sues Gilead for infringement over HIVE PrEP treatment patents; Senators Inhofe and Wicker ask President Trump to show no leniency on Chinese IP theft; the Supreme Court hears the Allen v. Cooper copyright appeal; the Federal Circuit issues precedential opinions on PTAB evidence admissibility and limitation in patent claim preamble; the Copyright Office says that its digital recordation pilot project is on track for Spring 2020; the PTAB Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) will review the Board’s rejection of substitute patent claims in a motion to amend; “This Is Spinal Tap” creators settle copyright suit; and T-Mobile announces December launch for nationwide 5G network.

What I tried to do for this presentation is figure out in about seven or eight minutes how I could convey to you what’s really going on in the United States. Because, frankly, it is a mess. The patent system in the United States, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is extraordinarily weakened from where it was 12 years ago. Getting an injunction in the United States is simply not possible anymore in litigation, except for in the most extreme situations. Over the last 12 years, the U.S. patent system largely has become a compulsory licensing system, and increasingly so. This obviously has ramifications for all patent owners. And during this time period, Congress also passed the America Invents Act, which created what’s known as the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which has made it more easy to invalidate patents in the United States. As it turns out, 90% of patents that actually get to a final decision at the PTAB are found to have a mistake.

The Arthrex decision caused considerable confusion and excitement among the patent bar last week, partly because the issue decided by the Federal Circuit was a constitutional, and not a patent one. While we await next steps from the parties and the USPTO, IPWatchdog spoke to several constitutional law experts to get their take on the significance of the decision and the likelihood that the Supreme Court would be interested in the issue if appealed. All agreed that the Federal Circuit’s reasoning was correct, though one thought the Court’s approach to deciding that administrative patent judges (APJs) are inferior officers was slightly “unusual” in its focus strictly on the issue of “supervision” over other factors that the Supreme Court has found to be relevant to the distinction between inferior and principal officers. IPWatchdog posed three questions to the experts based on some of the issues that have been raised since Arthrex.

November 1 was the deadline for filing amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is considering whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari to take up Athena Diagnostics v. Mayo Collaborative Services on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Almost every amicus filing to the Supreme Court in this case supported granting the petition or backed up the position of petitioner Athena, who is asking the Supreme Court to clarify its patent-eligibility doctrine under the Alice/Mayo framework on the subject of medical diagnostic patent claims. The appeal to the Supreme Court follows a hotly contested denial of an en banc rehearing of the Federal Circuit’s original panel decision in Athena, which produced eight opinions, including four dissents, with many judges agreeing that Athena’s invention should be patent eligible even while they disagreed over whether Supreme Court precedent allowed for patent protection of diagnostic methods.

This week in our nation’s capital, the U.S. Senate is the lone house of Congress that will host hearings on tech and innovation topics. On Tuesday, Senate subcommittees will explore national security concerns related to big tech use of user data along with NASA’s efforts to improve the STEM workforce. On Wednesday, a few legislative hearings will commence to look at bills related to government AI, cybersecurity and geothermal innovation, among other tech subjects. Elsewhere in D.C., the Center for International and Strategic Studies explores the future of the electrical grid and China’s efforts towards techno-governance.

On November 1, Meredith Addy of AddyHart P.C. and I submitted an Amici Curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Freenome Holdings and New Cures for Cancers in support of the Petition for Certiorari in Athena Diagnostics v. Mayo Collaborative Services. If the Supreme Court does not take this case, it is unlikely to reconsider its decisions on Section 101 of the U.S. patent law. This may be our last gasp judicial effort. The Supreme Court takes cases raising inconsistencies in the law or a circuit split. We knew parties/amici would focus on the Federal Circuit’s “internal circuit split,” so we took a different approach and urged the Court to resolve five critical inconsistencies in the law, summarized below.

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc. generated excitement late last week, when many initially speculated that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) would not be able to continue operations as usual in light of the ruling. However, now that the dust has settled, it seems more likely that the effects of Arthrex will be limited to a small subset of cases. While he could not comment on next steps directly as it is a pending matter, USPTO Director Andrei Iancu suggested during a panel at the John Marshall Law School’s 63rd IP Conference in Chicago on Friday that the Office would not be significantly burdened by the decision. USPTO guidance is likely to be issued soon. Of course, the decision has not done much to bolster the already shaky reputation of the PTAB or its Administrative Patent Judges with some, and there are several scenarios in which the Federal Circuit’s quick fix to avoid shutting down the Board entirely might be challenged. Below are some early reactions to the ruling and predictions about how it may play out. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in an opinion authored by Judge Moore, has ruled that the current statutory scheme for appointing Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violates the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution as it makes APJs principal officers. APJs are presently appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, but principal officers must be appointed by the U.S. President under the Constitution, Article II, § 2, cl. 2. To remedy this, the statutory removal provisions that are presently applied to APJs must be severed so that the Secretary of Commerce has the power to remove APJs without cause, said the Court. Dismissing the government’s and appellees’ arguments that the Appointments Clause issue had been waived by the appellant, Arthrex, Inc., because Arthrex had not raised the issue with the PTAB, the Federal Circuit said that “this is an issue of exceptional importance, and we conclude it is an appropriate use of our discretion to decide the issue over a challenge of waiver.”

Dismissing the government’s and appellees’ arguments that the Appointments Clause issue had been waived by the appellant, Arthrex, Inc., because Arthrex had not raised the issue with the PTAB, the Federal Circuit said that “this is an issue of exceptional importance, and we conclude it is an appropriate use of our discretion to decide the issue over a challenge of waiver.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, headed by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), yesterday heard from five witnesses on ways to improve patent quality at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Suggestions ranged from fixing patent eligibility jurisprudence to strengthening efforts on international work sharing, increasing patent application fees, and allotting more time for the examination process. The majority of panelists warned against the dangers of using patent quality as a means to simply block broad swaths of patents that particular industries or entities don’t like, and emphasized that clarifying U.S. patent law would likely go a long way to curbing invalidation rates.

Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT) has filed a second petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review a Federal Circuit holding that computer-implemented inventions that do not improve the basic functions of the computer itself are directed to abstract ideas and therefore patent ineligible. The present petition relates to U.S. Patent Nos. 7,685,055 (the “’055 patent”); 7,693,768 (the “’768 patent”); and 7,725,382 (the “’382 patent”). The petition TT filed in September relates to Patent Nos. 7,533,056, 7,212,999, and 7,904,374. The patents are all from the same family as three other patents found patent eligible by the CAFC in 2017. The latest petition argues that the Federal Circuit “simply declined to address conflicting Federal Circuit authority involving the same patent family or the line of other Federal Circuit decisions adopting and applying that authority’s reasoning,” and, therefore, clarification is needed from the High Court. The company’s argument may also get a boost from another petition filed recently appealing the controversial decision in ChargePoint v. Semaconnect, in which the Federal Circuit held that a vehicle charging station was not patent eligible.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: new patent collective for video technology launched; inventor rally to be held during live IPR hearing at AIPLA meeting; the White House indicates that the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal will focus on IP; the USPTO shifts burden of proving patentability in PTAB motions to amend to the petitioner after Aqua Products; the House of Representatives passes the CASE Act in a 410-6 vote; the EU invalidates the three-dimensional trademark to the Rubik’s Cube; Power Integrations settles its patent infringement litigation against ON Semiconductor; Intel files an antitrust suit against SoftBank over patent acquisition and assertion activities; Amazon.com posts its first year-over-year earnings loss in more than two years; and the Federal Circuit overturns Google’s challenge to a Philips patent on appeal from the PTAB.

Yesterday, we published a response from Daniel Takash, the Regulatory Policy Fellow at the Niskanen Center’s Captured Economy Project, asking for a more civil IP debate. The response was itself responding to Lydia Malone’s critical view of the R Street panel on Capitol Hill that she attended, and which she felt took the position that patents are too strong. I, too, wrote an article in advance of the R Street presentation where I was highly critical of the motivations of R Street. Mr. Takash suggests “[w]e should all do our best to live by Antonin Scalia’s maxim to ‘attack arguments, not people.’” That is perfectly reasonable. It is, however, also perfectly reasonable to question the motivations of those who are making claims that are unquestionably false. To be quite direct about it, the R Street supposition that patents are too strong is pure fantasy of the first order. Anyone with even fleeting familiarity with the subject matter who has at all been paying attention to the demise of the U.S. patent system over the last 12+ years knows that U.S. patents are not too strong. U.S. patents are too weak. So weak that for the first time in a decade the number of U.S. patent applications has decreased while patent applications worldwide surged forward by more than 5% during 2018. Moreover, U.S. applicants are not foregoing patent protection, they just aren’t filing as much in the United States. Indeed, U.S. applicants continue to be the hungriest for patents worldwide.