The lobby against the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continues to compare judges to murderers and invokes Trump motto/slogans for resurgence of trolls

Summary: The toxic language, the bogus narratives and the venom against PTAB is getting increasingly unbearable and untenable, especially because it seems like the USPTO's leadership, the Supreme Court and just about every corner of the Establishment stands behind PTAB and guards it

THE triumph of PTAB, necessarily improving patent quality at the USPTO, is undeniable. The anti-PTAB brigade, which resorted to even sending me threatening letters, isn't getting its way. It tried all sorts of things to sabotage PTAB (threatening words, smears, legal action, price hikes, misuse of tribal immunity, lobbying and so on). But PTAB continues to break new records. Demand for PTAB is growing.

"How would IAM like it if we called it "mass murderer"? Or "Nazis"?"IAM 'magazine', part of the anti-PTAB brigade (for obvious reasons), carries on with the usual. Adam Houldsworth published this blog post yesterday -- a post with a loaded headline that says "PTAB not such a death squad" ("not such"?). So the patent trolls' lobby perpetuates the insulting narrative that compares patent judges to a firing line/squad because they cull out wrongly-granted patents. How much longer need we explain why this analogy is offensive? How would IAM like it if we called it "mass murderer"? Or "Nazis"?

Here's what Houldsworth wrote:

A new US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) study has provided an improved insight into the outcomes of administrative validity challenges made against Orange Book-listed pharmaceutical patents at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Among the report’s key findings is that, while petitions against FDA-approved drug patent rights have enjoyed similarly high institution rates to petitions against other kinds of patents, Orange Book rights have a far greater survival rate than others when challenges reach a final written decision.

Notice that they also use words like "survival"; the anti-PTAB brigade almost invariantly uses words like "kill" and "survive" to describe PTAB's actions. So when a patent aggressor or troll has a patent challenged it is "under attack" or merely "survives" the "kill"; the victim or the defendant is thereon portrayed as an "attacker" looking to "kill" patents. Narrative reversals like these are very common in war terminology/lexicons. Incidentally, days ago IAM also published an article titled "Can Andrei Iancu make patents great again?" and by "great again" they mean ending PTAB or helping patent aggressors. What's so great about that? The patent extremist Richard Lloyd (the most overzealous of the IAM bunch) fails to understand that IAM, by saying/reciting the "great again" motto, basically associates itself with fascists.

"Narrative reversals like these are very common in war terminology/lexicons."Iancu would be wise not to associate with IAM in any way, but this summer he'll give a talk in an event set up by IAM.

Speaking of false narratives (regarding PTAB), watch what IP Watch published yesterday. Here's what's outside the paywall (many of these Web sites, including IAM, broaden their paywalls these days):

The United States Supreme Court is likely to affirm the constitutionality of US Patent and Trademark Office inter partes reviews when it rules in the closely watched matter of Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC, according to Michael Best & Friedrich intellectual property attorney Marshall Schmitt. The end result of the decision, however, is hard to predict, he said.

If you only ask the patent microcosm for its opinion on Oil States, it will call the expected slam-dunk for PTAB IPRs “Highly Uncertain”. That's nonsense however. Expect the Justices to support IPRs, maybe even unanimously.

"It's not like we're dealing with rational people here but with extremists drunk on power."Judging by what an anti-PTAB site wrote yesterday, it looks like Iancu will defend PTAB, which is good news and a relief (if true). To quote the relevant bits:

The PTAB Bar Association has a committee called “PTAB Appeals” that scheduled a meeting on April 5, 2018 to discuss various topics with sitting judges at the PTAB. This meeting was set up in part because of interest in Chief Judge Ruschke to meet with practitioners to discuss ex parte appeals. Ex parte appeals is the less-discussed and less-focused on aspect of what PTAB does. The two-hour meeting was at the USPTO in Alexandria, VA and covered a lot of ground including Section 101.

At this meeting, Chief Judge Ruschke was optimistic about newly appointed director Andrew Iancu. According to Ruschke, Iancu has stressed that the USPTO has to do a better job of applying Section 101 in a more consistent, straightforward manner. And Iancu sees the corpus of decisions coming out of the PTAB as an important clue to this.

Defending PTAB from patent extremists won't be easy. I'm already receiving threats for merely reporting on this. It reminds me of the numerous threats the EPO sent me for merely reporting its abuses. It's not like we're dealing with rational people here but with extremists drunk on power. ⬆