Posts Tagged: "Michelle Lee"

Inventor Argues USPTO Officials’ Motion to Dismiss Due Process Violations Case Based on Immunity Defense Fails

On January 21, inventor Martin David Hoyle and his company B.E. Technology filed a response in opposition to a consolidated motion to dismiss that was filed last November by defendants Michelle K. Lee, former Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a pair of officials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and three administrative patent judges (APJs) who sat on PTAB panels invalidating Hoyle’s patent claims. Hoyle and B.E. Tech’s response brief argues that the motion to dismiss filed by the former and current USPTO employees is based on factual disputes that are inappropriate to decide on a motion to dismiss, and that plaintiffs have made out a sufficient due process claim under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971).

Patent Owner Sues Former USPTO Officials for ‘Improperly Stacking the Deck’ Against Him

A patent owner has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee against former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Michelle Lee, and a number of other former USPTO officials, for allegedly depriving the plaintiffs “of their valuable property rights in quasi-judicial administrative proceedings before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (‘PTAB’).” The complaint further claims that PTAB proceedings have been “tainted by various improprieties and underhanded tactics, designed to stack the deck against [plaintiffs] and in favor of their far more powerful opponents. In short, the system had been rigged all along, due to the unconstitutional actions of the Defendants named herein.”

The Honeymoon is Over: Time for Iancu to Take Action on PTAB Harassment of Patent Owners

Just over 18 months ago, Andrei Iancu assumed control of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As the Director of the USPTO, Iancu has changed the tone of the conversation over patents in America. During President Obama’s second term the USPTO became aggressively anti-patent and anti-innovator. The speeches, policies and inaction of Director Michelle Lee led innovators and observers to correctly claim that the Obama Administration had come to champion the viewpoints of infringers, not the technology innovators. Director Iancu changed that almost overnight. Where Director Iancu has failed, however, is with respect to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). With great fanfare, Director Iancu created a Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) that we were told would result in more decisions of the PTAB being declared precedential on the entire PTAB. There was hope that the POP would address the most important issues, such as serial challenges to the same patent over and over again, the use of the same prior art over and over again, and once and for all require the PTAB to apply the Federal Circuit view of what it means to be a real party and interest. Unfortunately, real reform of the PTAB has not happened despite tinkering with the Trial Guide. In important ways the PTAB is worse, and the efforts that have been undertaken incorrectly form the appearance of reform.

First House IP Subcommittee Hearing of 116th Congress Addresses Ways to Increase Female Inventorship

Today, April 3, the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing titled Trailblazers and Lost Einsteins: Women Inventors and the Future of American Innovation—a topic that also was considered last Wednesday by the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet in their first hearing of the term. The House hearing was titled, Lost Einsteins: Lack of Diversity in Patent Inventorship and the Impact on America’s Innovation Economy and, like today’s Senate hearing, focused on a recent report on female inventorship released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and featured testimony on how to improve rates of female inventorship from a collection of women in fields having strong ties to the U.S. patent system. Susie Armstrong, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Qualcomm, Inc., said that, for companies like hers that were trying to take the lead in 5G mobile networks and other areas of innovation, more great tech minds from underrepresented communities were needed. An inventor herself who helped create single packet data communications that allowed cell phones to access the Internet for the first time, Armstrong said that Qualcomm had produced educational initiatives like the Thinkabit Lab, which partners with school districts and libraries to encourage students to innovate in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector.

Still No Answer From PTAB on Apple Sanctions Request Against VoIP-Pal After Six Months

And yet, despite this apparent vindication of VoIP-Pal’s patents against the strongest of odds in an executive branch tribunal where APJ panels are stacked in the interest of achieving policy objectives, VoIP-Pal and its current CEO Emil Malak still find themselves to be stuck in patent purgatory over a sanctions motion which the PTAB hasn’t decided for more than half a year… The fact that ex parte communications have caused such a stir in Apple’s IPRs against VoIP-Pal is very interesting given how the PTAB has reacted to allegations of such communications in the past. Anyone who followed the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe’s case at the PTAB will likely remember that the agency revoked the tribe’s ability to file motions in response to a request for discovery on the potential of political pressure caused by ex parte communications between APJs assigned to the case and their superiors at the PTAB. The PTAB denied that motion and restricted the St. Regis tribe’s ability to file motions within a month of St. Regis’ discovery request. That the PTAB has dragged its feet for more than six months on Apple’s request for sanctions on ex parte communications without the same level of punitive response is very telling.