Scott Graham [1, 2, 3, 4] heard from PTAB practitioners that Ruschke is moving

Summary: As the chief judge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) moves elsewhere at the USPTO there are those who hope that a replacement will undo PTAB inter partes reviews (IPRs), which generally improve the quality of granted patents

Michael Loney was one of the first people to report that Ruschke from PTAB is moving on (or sideways, or upwards). His background, which involves enduring attacks and abuse from patent maximalists, may not have suited his character. So here's what's coming next in his career:

David Ruschke, who has been Patent Trial and Appeal Board chief judge since 2016, has been given a role intended to improve the free flow between the Patents and PTAB business unites at the USPTO

It didn't take long for the patent trolls' lobby, IAM, to pressure Iancu to marginalise PTAB after Ruschke's departure (or announcement thereof). IAM is not even pretending to respect PTAB; it's a hostile trolls-funded think tank and under the loaded headline "Exit of PTAB chief judge gives Iancu further opportunity to put his own imprint on agency leadership" it wrote:

The news that David Ruschke, chief judge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), is leaving his role to take up a new position at the USPTO took much of the DC patent community by surprise. After the move was disclosed in a town hall meeting on Tuesday and a memo from Director Iancu was circulated internally, PTAB practitioners started to pick up on events and by that evening it had hit the headlines, with Scott Graham over at law.com the first to break the story.

Scott Graham is another one of those patent maximalists, fed by other patent maximalists as his sourced (as we noted here before). With an imminent departure of a good and thick-skinned judge like Ruschke we need to watch closely who's suggested as a replacement (and who by). ⬆