08.23.17
Gemini version available ♊︎Ahead of Supreme Court Decision, the Patent Microcosm is Trying to Scandalise PTAB
…Just like it did Michelle Lee until she left
Summary: The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which defends many businesses from bogus patents and patent trolls, comes under fire from protectors of the trolls (or those who profit from patent Armageddon/legal chaos)
THE Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is going to decide about PTAB some time soon (probably months from now) and as we wrote earlier this week (including yesterday), PTAB foes are lining up to discredit PTAB. That notably includes Watchtroll, an apologist of patent trolls and a proponent of software patents (obviously still in denial over Alice). They even march in front of the USPTO‘s facility and burn things (literally). That’s how obtuse some of these people are. Bullies. Crybullies.
The US is still suffering from an epidemic of patent trolls, even after SCOTUS ruled on TC Heartland, potentially forcing most trolls out of Texas. In many cases, PTAB invalidates patents of patent trolls, irrespective of whether they file lawsuits or not (sometimes they just threaten small companies in secret to extract ‘protection’ money). This problem is very real and corporate media now compares it to extortion and blackmail (rightly so). The consequences are profound and are estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars each year (mostly at the expense of small companies). Just look at this example from yesterday. It’s about Uniloc. Bloomberg has just called it a “patent licensor”, but it’s actually a nasty patent troll. Here’s a portion:
Patent licensor Uniloc Luxembourg SA—among the top patent buyers in the U.S.-brokered market in the second quarter of 2017—has already gone to court to enforce them, according to data reviewed by Bloomberg BNA.
Just a few weeks after adding new patents to its intellectual property arsenal, Uniloc began asserting them in infringement complaints filed in U.S. district courts against companies, including software giant Apple Inc., Bloomberg Law data show.
PTAB has already taken on this nasty patent troll (see for example this report from last year), so all those PTAB opponents are in effect protectors of trolls, too. This is true for Dennis Crouch, who keeps trying to interfere with PTAB’s work. His latest attempt to discredit PTAB is less than 24 hours old and it’s suggestive of patent trial stacking:
Important statement here from the Court against allowing a PTAB IPR patent challenger to continue to file additional IPR petitions after the 1-year deadline of 315(b) via the joinder process of 315(c); and also against stacking of PTAB Board to achieve particular results on rehearing. The court’s statement though is entirely dicta – it actually affirmed the PTAB decision here where these actions occurred.
[...]
On the rehearing, the PTAB Chief (acting on behalf of the PTO Director) shuffled the Board seemingly to change the result – adding two additional judges – Medley and Arbes – with the result that the dissenting opinion became the majority who offered an interesting explanation of the statute. Section 315(c) textually appears to focus on joinder of additional people. However, the text actually allows for “joinder of any person” – and according to the majority that should be interpreted to allow the “same person” to join himself to his prior filing (and in the process bring-along additional claims).
[...]
Unfortunately for the appeal, the Federal Circuit determined that it “need not resolve” the joinder issue because the obviousness finding were proper and were based upon the original petition.
[...]
Part of the reason why this is all dicta is that the PTO Director’s decision whether or not to initiate proceedings is – by statute – not appealable.
Expect many more attacks like this from PTAB foes. They will try to make scandals — partly real or purely manufactured — about PTAB. By tarnishing PTAB’s image in the media they hope to influence Justices and assist patent aggressors/trolls. █
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