Litigation
Ca. Litig. Rev. 2020
Content
- 2020 Adr Case Review
- Appeals and Writs
- Art Law
- Class Actions: the Many-Headed Hydra of App-Based Driver Classification
- Employment Law: Statutory and Regulatory Changes
- Ethics
- Evidence - Appellate Court Standards of Proof
- Evidence - Trial Court Burdens of Proof
- Insurance Law
- Justice Carol a. Corrigan
- Masthead
- Military and Veterans in the Law, 2020
- Table of Contents
- Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property
By Morgan Chu, Dominik Slusarczyk, Caleb Graves
A Look at The Patent Trial and Appeal Boardâs Recent Fintiv Decision as the Board Travels Through a Crossroads
Patent applications undergo a lengthy examination process at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the patents that ultimately issue are therefore presumptively valid.1 Nevertheless, it is possible for anyone to challenge the validity of an issued patent, and one popular tool for doing so is known as inter partes review, or âIPR.â An IPR is an adversarial proceeding that takes place before panels of administrative patent judges (APJs) who are appointed through a different process than the federal district court judges of the Constitutionâs Article III. The IPR procedure, which has been used to invalidate scores of patents, today stands in the midst of a transformation.
Established by Congress nearly a decade ago with the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act,2 IPR was meant âto provide an effective and efficient alternativeâ to litigation in the federal district courts.3 In its early days, the APJ panels that heard IPR cases were assailed as âdeath squads . . . killing property rights.â4 With a high rate of invalidation outcomes, IPRs quickly became a popular tool for operating companies accused of patent infringement in the district courts. That trend has receded in recent years.