Companies Hit With ITC Patent Complaints Face Long Odds at PTAB

Companies facing patent infringement allegations at a U.S. trade agency are having trouble convincing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to review the patents’ validity.

The PTAB, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal, in recent months has repeatedly exercised its discretion and declined to review patents that are part of infringement investigations at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Google LLC, Garmin Ltd., and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. are among the companies that have been shut out of the PTAB’s inter partes review (IPR), a program that accused infringers traditionally lean on to challenge patent validity.

The decisions applied ...