High Court Denies Intel Bid to Nix Patent Office’s Fintiv Rule

The US Supreme Court won’t take up Intel Corp.‘s challenge to US Patent and Trademark Office rules that administrative patent judges have used to decline validity reviews of patents asserted in a series of high-stakes lawsuits.

The appeal targeted a rule that gave the Patent Trial and Appeal Board discretion to refuse to review a patent if there’s ongoing parallel litigation in district court. The Fintiv rule was implemented under former PTO Director Andrei Iancu.

The rule, which has since been tweaked by current PTO Director Kathi Vidal, directed PTAB panels to refrain from instituting reviews when parallel patent ...