High Court Ruling Changes Patent Office Challenge Dynamics

Challenges to the validity of patents are likely become more complex following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the Patent and Trademark Office must address all challenged claims, and can no longer weed some out early in the proceedings.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is the the PTO body that decides the administrative challenges known as inter partes reviews (IPRs) to patent validity. The PTAB previously only had issued decisions analyzing the specific patent claims it wanted to review. But the high court April 24, in a 5-4 decision, said that was improper, in SAS Institute Inc. v. ...