Justices Ponder Reviewability of PTAB Time-Bar Decisions (1)

The U.S. Supreme Court grappled with whether federal courts could review Patent and Trademark Office decisions to review a patent’s validity when the agency determined that the time bar didn’t apply.

Justice Elena Kagan said that allowing courts to second-guess the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s choice to institute trial could allow the agency and parties to go through administrative proceedings “soup to nuts,” only to have a court throw out the entire process over a missed deadline to challenge “what we know by now is an invalid patent.”

The Dec. 9 arguments in Thryv, Inc. v. Click-To-Call Technologies, ...