Patent Head Nixes ‘Unfocused’ Validity Petition Due to Resources

The chief of the US Patent and Trademark Office threw out a validity challenge to a lithium battery patent, ruling the challenger’s approach was “unfocused” and would burden the agency’s tribunal to do too much work.

Reviewing patent validity isn’t an efficient use of the PTO’s resources “when a petition presents a multitude of unfocused grounds leaving the work to be done by the Office,” Director John Squires wrote in a director review decision issued Wednesday. Although Zhuhai CosMX Battery Co. Ltd. made sufficient invalidity arguments against some parts of the invention, Squires terminated the entire petition because review would ...