Posts Tagged: "PTAB"

CAFC: PTAB’s Claim Construction Analysis Improperly Relied on Extrinsic Evidence

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), with Chief Judge Moore writing for the court, vacated and remanded a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision, stating the PTAB erred in construing the claims of Magseis’ U.S. Patent No. RE45,268 (’268 patent). Seabed Geosolutions (US) Inc. v. Magseis FF LLC. In 2017, Magseis FF LLC (predecessor of Fairfield Industries Inc.) sued Seabed Geosolutions (US) Inc. for patent infringement with respect to several of its patents, including the ‘268 patent, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. On April 27, 2018, Seabed petitioned the PTAB for inter partes review (IPR) of the ‘268 patent on multiple grounds. On review, the PTAB found the asserted claims of Magseis’ ‘268 patent to be valid. PTAB concluded the prior art relied upon by Seabed -i.e. self-orienting gimbaled geophones – failed to prove the challenged claims were unpatentable. Seabed appealed the PTAB’s final written decision to the CAFC.

Federal Circuit Kills PersonalWeb’s ‘Content-Based Identifier’ Patent Claims Under 101

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granting judgment on the pleadings to Google, Facebook, EMC Corporation and VMware, Inc. that PersonalWeb Technologies’  patent claims were ineligible under Section 101. The decision was precedential and written by Judge Prost. The case has a long history and the CAFC has dealt with the patented technology before. The specific patents at issue here are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,802,310 (“the ’310 patent”), 6,415,280 (“the ’280 patent”), and 7,949,662 (“the ’662 patent”). The patents generally cover “data-processing systems that assign each data item a substantially unique name that depends on the item’s content—a content-based identifier.”

Patent Filings Roundup: Litigation Funding WAGs the Dog; Funded Western District Semiconductor Campaign Sees IPRs Filed

Numbers were relatively stable last week, with the district courts seeing 57 new patent filings and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) seeing 25 petitions (two post grant reviews [PGRs] and 23 inter partes reviews [IPRs]). A big chunk of the PTAB action was against Ocean Semiconductor LLC by Applied Materials, Inc., who filed five against the litigation financed entity (Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC), and six filed by Lumenis Ltd. against BTL Healthcare Technologies A.S in an apparent litigation-free freedom-to-operate action. Bank of America filed a few challenges against NantWorks; Rothschild subsidiaries filed a number of district court complaints; and two IPRs were filed and instituted against the IPValue Management, LLC-run Monterey Research semiconductor suit—one by Qualcomm, one by STMicroelectronics; and ditto for two by Freeman Capital Partners-run FG SRC LLC—one by Xilinx and one by Intel and Xilinx. 

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.”

MicroSurgical Decision Reiterates PTAB’s ‘Wide Net’ Approach to Transition Applications Under the AIA

March 16, 2013 marked a watershed date in the practice of patent law as the effective date of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA). Per Section 3 of the AIA, patent applications having an effective filing date prior to the effective date of the AIA are subject to first-to-invent/ pre-AIA law, whereas applications claiming an effective filing date after the effective date of the AIA are subject to the first inventor-to-file provisions of the AIA, including post grant administrative challenges introduced as part of the AIA. Not surprisingly, there were a number of patent applications filed that bridged the March 16, 2013 AIA effective date. These so-called “transition applications” were filed after March 16, 2013 but claimed priority to an application filed before March 16, 2013. These applications would not be subject to the provisions of the AIA unless the application contained a claim that did not properly find support in the pre-AIA priority document(s). The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is taking aim at these transitional applications, and patents issuing therefrom, by casting a wide net with respect to eligibility under the AIA and closing apparent loopholes such that patent owners cannot reverse a finding that a patent is subject to AIA law, even if all of the claims of said patent are entitled to a pre-March 16, 2013 priority date.