Appeals Court Backs PTAB Common-Tech Stance, Trims IBM Patent

An administrative tribunal may rely on well-understood technology when reviewing challenged patents, a federal appeals court ruled, upholding a decision that wiped out most of an International Business Machines Corp. patent on automatic account creation.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board was right to find that earlier technology taught key parts of IBM’s US Patent No. 7,631,346, which covers creating user accounts automatically within a login flow, Judge Raymond T. Chen wrote for a three-judge panel in a precedential opinion issued Tuesday in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The panel affirmed the board’s October 2023 ...