Bonum Certa Men Certa

US Litigation Office: Former Judge From the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Leaves the Office as Another Litigator Enters as New Deputy Director

Litigation maximalists at the helm

Trump and Hatch



Summary: Nathan Kelley is leaving and Laura Peter is joining the USPTO; That means one patent judge less and a new Deputy Director who used to work for what some call a "patent troll"

THE U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a hopeless, sordid mess under the new Director, a Trump appointee whose firm had worked for Trump before he got the job. Whether it's all just a coincidence or not, the impact seems clear and technology companies do not like it. Does the Office work for scientists or for lawyers?



"Does the Office work for scientists or for lawyers?"Yesterday Ben Wodecki was spotted as one among several who covered this move, citing a press release. He said: "Perkins Coie has hired Nathan Kelley, the former solicitor and deputy general counsel at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Kelley, who stepped down from his role at the USPTO over the summer, joins Perkins Coie as a partner in its IP practice. He will work out of the firm’s Washington DC office. In his role at the USPTO Kelley represented the office director in court and has been involved in some of the biggest patent and trademark cases of the last few years, including Oil States v Greene’s Energy Group, Novartis AG v Noven Pharma, and Aqua Products v Matal."

IP Watch wrote about this too:

Nathan Kelley has stepped down from his role as solicitor and deputy general counsel at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to join the Perkins Coie law firm in Washington, DC. Kelley also had served as chief administrative patent judge in charge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

[...]

During his term as Solicitor, Kelley defended hundreds of decisions of the PTAB and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) before the Federal Circuit. Kelley also advocated the USPTO’s position during interagency deliberations on IP cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Industries, Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. He also oversaw the USPTO’s defense of numerous district court cases against it.


We'll probably come back to it in the weekend. It doesn't look good, especially after another senior person from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the chief judge, moved or was removed. The last time there was a 'reorg' at the USPTO a technical Director (Michelle Lee) was replaced by a 'mole' of the litigation zealots, Mr. Iancu. An insider/watchdog has just mentioned another move: "Rumors abound that a major reorg is on the way for the USPTO CIO. Hopefully, patents will take back Debbie Stephens and the PTO DIR will get rid of some of the Owens hold overs. Scardino is pushing for this but maybe he should look at his own org before casting stones."

Another litigator, this one connected to Immersion Corporation (notorious aggressor which some call a "patent troll"), will be in charge of the Office. As IP Watch put it yesterday: "The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a new deputy director, Laura Peter, a veteran intellectual property attorney, most recently at Silicon Valley cyber-defence firm A10 Networks."

"The Director she'll be working with is terrible (bad for technology, good for the litigation 'industry')."Patent maximalists welcomed the move, saying that "Peter most recently held the position of deputy general counsel of A10 Networks in Silicon Valley [and] Laura Peter has been named as deputy under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the USPTO, effective November 13, 2018."

That's next week. The Director she'll be working is terrible (bad for technology, good for the litigation 'industry'). Will this one too be as terrible? Given her background (a degree in science), maybe not. Time will tell..

The above insider/watchdog added : "Rumor has it that the deputy director has an affinity for Grant Thornton, we will ask the DOC IG to see if its true. In the mean time: https://goingconcern.com/grant-thornton-pcaob-bancorp/ [...] We are worried that USPTO leadership is asking Grant Thorton, IBM and the like to help with the restructure of CIO. However, many of us have worked with them over the years and while they can give great advice they often fail on internal IT issues. https://betanews.com/2012/12/06/ibm-has-a-big-problem/ …"

There was over a week's downtime recently. Some had been accusing the CIO of incompetence, citing appointments by nepotism (like at the EPO).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
 
Links 17/02/2025: LLMs Failing and Patreon Support Becoming a Burden to Bloggers
Links for the day
Links 17/02/2025: Blogroll Conundrum; Research, Scientists Under Siege
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 16, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 16, 2025
Links 16/02/2025: Nostalgia for Physical Media and the US Government Actively Promotes Pro-Kremlin Politicians in the EU
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2025:Life, Cynicism, and languages
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025