11.19.18
All the Usual Suspects Are Still Working Hard to Harm the Legitimacy if Not Existence of Patent Quality Control
Low-quality, dubious and illegitimate patents are being used by them to extract money from productive companies
Summary: With David Ruschke (above) out of his role and other former judges leaving the Office one wonders if the new Office leadership is just scheming to hide a decline in patent quality by simply removing quality assessors
THE Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) deals with thousands of inter partes reviews (IPRs) which invalidate thousands of software patents, typically with the Federal Circuit affirming (or declining to deal with appeals). The European Patent Office (EPO) has a similar mechanism and it came under many attacks in recent years. Those who dislike PTAB generally dislike patent quality. It’s as simple as this.
“PTAB would not be necessary had the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) stopped granting fake patents on algorithms and other dubious patents.”Days ago we noticed that Michael Rosen continues to bash PTAB for the greedy sponsors of the American Enterprise Institute. We have bo idea why Google News syndicates as ‘news’ this propaganda of patent trolls-affiliated think tanks. It’s connected loosely to Koch-funded think tanks and scholars, who also meddled in Oil States, hoping to influence the outcome at SCOTUS, potentially ending IPRs.
PTAB would not be necessary had the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) stopped granting fake patents on algorithms and other dubious patents.
Unified Patents has just stopped another patent troll in its tracks, owing to PTAB as usual. In its own words:
On November 13, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents Inc. v. Plectrum, LLC, IPR2017-01430 holding claims 8 and 11 of U.S. Patent 5,978,951 unpatentable. The patent is owned and asserted by Plectrum, LLC, a new NPE [troll] formed after acquiring several patents formerly owned by Hewlett Packard.
No doubt we’ll keep seeing new attempts to discredit if not destroy PTAB. The Federal Circuit Bar Association (FCBA), patent maximalists [1, 2] who have nothing to do with the Federal Circuit itself, are advertising webcasts [1, 2]. Trying to work around PTAB challenges is their goal; the same is done by law firms directly, e.g. this other newly-advertised upcoming ‘webinar’ about PTAB (there are others). Patent Docs keeps pushing these every weekend. We already explained how politicians, lobbyists etc. are pitted against PTAB and if one check who pays them, then the motivations become pretty clear.
“The future of PTAB may sadly depend on lobbyists, i.e. bribes. There’s a powerful lobby doing anything it can to scuttle PTAB, but there’s a reactionary lobby from technology companies (CCIA, HTIA and so on).”Robert Schaffer, Joseph Robinson and Dustin Weeks recently wrote about PTAB, not adding anything particularly new about the recently-alluded-to Arista PTAB IPRs (ITC arrogantly ignores these).
Gene Quinn, joining the above trio, also published a little note about an exceptional “mixed decision”. To quote: “When determining if a reference was a printed publication mere indexing is insufficient – you must prove that the indexing was “meaningful” enough to provide access to the public. Also, when challenging substitute claims during an IPR, the Petitioner must provide claim construction if it is important to their invalidity argument; otherwise, it is not error for the Board to focus on the ordinary meaning of the substitute claim language.”
So again they just try to work around the challenges, knowing that IPRs are typically successful and PTAB typically squashes patents it looks into (based on reasonable evidence). The future of PTAB may sadly depend on lobbyists, i.e. bribes. There’s a powerful lobby doing anything it can to scuttle PTAB, but there’s a reactionary lobby from technology companies (CCIA, HTIA and so on). █
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