New Evidence Precedent Gives Lawyers a Patent Board Road Map

Attorneys may face better odds when trying to convince Patent and Trademark Office administrative judges to review patents after a new agency precedent on how the judges must handle evidence.

Patent Trial and Appeal Board panels must weigh all the available evidence when determining whether non-patent literature could be used in a bid to invalidate a patent, the agency’s Precedential Opinion Panel said in Hulu, LLC v. Sound View Innovations, LLC. The board said Hulu “based on a totality of the evidence currently in the record” established a reasonable likelihood that a textbook was publicly available before the patent application ...