Bonum Certa Men Certa

Signs of Positive Progress: The Patent Trial and Appeal Board is Really Hurting Patent Parasites

Binoculars



Summary: Patent trolls and the meta-industry which creates nothing but lawsuits is growingly afraid of boards that ascertain patent quality at the USPTO

THE Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is probably AIA's best outcome. It helps eliminate software patents by the thousands, i.e. a lot more rapidly than courts do, and it erodes confidence in software patents -- enough to discourage some new patent applications and even more so patent lawsuits (these have become too risky for the plaintiff).



As one might expect, the patent 'industry' (mostly patent law firms) is up in arms and some resorted to insulting PTAB. Others complained to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), but it didn't get them anywhere. CAFC has done nothing to stop or even slow down PTAB.

"CAFC has done nothing to stop or even slow down PTAB."Here we have one of the more strident patent maximalists' sites moaning to CAFC about PTAB, for PTAB is throwing away bad patents without giving assignees the benefit of the doubt. To quote the author: "The Federal Circuit remanded a final written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("PTAB" or "Board") because the Board invalidated certain claims in a patent without providing adequate notice or opportunity to the patentee to respond to an assertion about a prior art reference. Interestingly, in the In re NuVasive, Inc. opinion decided on November 9, 2016, the Federal Circuit reviewed the outcome of two IPR proceedings related to the same patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,187,334, directed to implants for spinal fusion surgery."

Another one of those sites (albeit a lot more polite and usually professional/academic) wrote about PTAB and also about "non-reviewable decisions", i.e. decisions without proper oversight:

Arbitrator as Arbitrary: Non-reviewable decisions (whether by the USPTO or by an arbitrator) are generally troubling because they create the potential for arbitrary awards that depart from both the law and facts.

The case was originally denied hearing by the Texas Supreme Court. On rehearing request, the Court has showed some interest by requesting further briefing from Jenner & Block and two amicus filings have supported the petition. Because it is a Federal Law (the FAA) that has prevented judicial review thus far, the case will be appealable directly to the U.S. Supreme Court once Texas gives its final word.


The US granted literally hundreds of thousands of software patents in just over a decade. In order to clean up this mess, which is basically a big chunk of invalid patents (clogging up the system), something like PTAB is not only useful but also necessary if not imperative. The reaction to PTAB from patent maximalists has been rather revealing. They just want more and more patents on just about everything someone does or thinks. It's them who are the radicals or extremists, not reformers who remind them -- as we habitually do -- that the patent system was originally created to give incentive for publication and disseminate knowledge (or increase overall innovation), not to feed a newly-created collective of parasites who assume that more than 10 million patents should be filed and most patent applications be accepted by the examiners (and later by nontechnical judges).

The US is still floating in a swamp of bad patents and a popular phrase in the US right now is, "drain the swamp!"

Recent Techrights' Posts

Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
 
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025