Rob Sterne & Gene Quinn

Recent Articles by

PTAB Death Squads: Are All Commercially Viable Patents Invalid?

The Board cancelled 95.2% of all claims for which trial was instituted, and cancelled 82.9% of all claims that were initially challenged by the petitioner… These bleak statistics have lead Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader to at the AIPLA annual meeting in October 2013 call the PTAB “death squads killing property rights.” Then again on Friday, March 21, 2014, at a conference hosted by the George Mason University School of Law, Chief Judge Rader said he was “troubled” by the many differences between proceedings at the PTAB and in the district courts, particularly pointing to the disparities in the treatment of the same evidence concerning the same claims. Rader mentioned that his recent comments about the Board being a “death squad” for patents in contested proceedings may be more accurate than some originally thought, considering the dismal track record for survivability of challenged claims in the first wave of final written decisions.