Posts Tagged: "University of Florida Research Foundation"

Perspective: Weakening Alice Will Weaken the U.S. Patent System’s Second Engine of Innovation

Today is Alice’s fifth birthday; some may not be celebrating, but as a birthday gift, John Vandenberg argues the decision was not new law and should not be abrogated. – On the third day of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee – IP Subcommittee’s hearings this month on whether to radically revise the standards for patent eligibility, I testified on behalf of our patent system’s under-appreciated second engine of innovation. Below are some of the key arguments I made in my oral and written testimony and my thoughts on why the Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision was good law that should not be abrogated. Much of the anti-Alice commentary touts our patent system’s first engine of innovation, which uses the lure of monopoly profits or royalties to incentivize innovation and the public disclosure of those innovations. Today’s Sec. 101 jurisprudence is said to harm that first engine of innovation, particularly in life sciences where it is easier to get a patent in Europe and China than in the U.S., causing investment in personalized therapy and medicine R&D in the U.S. to suffer. While some question those factual premises, the “101 status quo” camp primarily responds that Alice (along with IPRs) has curtailed abusive patent troll litigation, cutting patent litigation costs by 40% or more. But, another important point has received little attention: expanding what can be patented, and how claimed, risks harming our patent system’s second engine of innovation.

PTAB Chief Ruschke says Expanded Panel Decisions are Conducted in Secret

Ruschke noted that his authority to expand the panels for PTAB trials doesn’t require him to notify the parties in the trial that the decision to expand the panel has been made. In response to questions on panel expansion, Ruschke noted that when the decision to expand the panel has been made, “the parties will find out in the decision when it issues at that point.” So decisions to expand panels are made in secret and parties in the trial only find out about panel expansion after a decision is reached… Interestingly, petitioner General Plastic requested a rehearing with an expanded panel but the expanded panel in that case found that PTAB’s governing statutes do not permit parties to request, or panels to authorize, expanded panels; panel expansion only lies within the Chief Judge’s discretion.

UFRF’s win on Eleventh Amendment at PTAB creates IPR immunity for public universities

Each of the Covidien IPRs challenged the validity of a single patent owned by the University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) which the university had previously asserted against Covidien. The decisions made by the ALJs in these IPRs indicate that public research universities can find protection from review proceedings at PTAB by claiming rights afforded them by the Eleventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution… In their final written decision, the PTAB ALJs note that deciding this case based on UFRF’s Eleventh Amendment defense could have wide-reaching implications for the future of validity challenges to patents held by public university research arms or “a monetization foundation affiliated with a state university.”