Bonum Certa Men Certa

PTAB Engages in Patent Justice, But Lobbyists of Patent Trolls Try to Blame PTAB for All the Problems of the US and Then Promote Iancu

Related: Further Scrutiny of Andrei Iancu Shows That He's on Both Sides of Troll Battles and PTAB Battles

Photo credit: The American Lawyer

Andrei IancuSummary: In an effort to curtail quality control at the US patent office, voices of the litigation 'industry' promote the irrational theory that the demise of the US is all just the fault of patent reform

THE appeals (or petitions) at the USPTO are working. Many patents are being invalidated when they lack merit. Thanks to PTAB...



Michael Loney, the managing editor of Managing IP, took note of (and apparently graphed) the effects of PTAB fees going up after all the PTAB shaming. It's no secret that patent extremists have bullied USPTO officials into making PTAB less accessible (less affordable) and as Loney explained: "The increase in PTAB fees on Jan 16 had an impact on petition filing. Spike of 37 petitions on Jan 15 per Docket Navigator. As well as smaller but significant numbers of 18 petitions on Jan 12 and 10 on Jan 11..."

Last year was another record year for PTAB; will that trend carry on in spite of these price hikes? We shall see.

Meanwhile, Loney takes note of Allergan's troubles amid its patent "scam" (attempting to dodge PTAB by misuse of tribal immunity). "There are now about a dozen class-action antitrust lawsuits pending against Allergan", he wrote, "that allege “a multi-pronged effort to block generic versions of Restasis from coming to market.”"

So Allergan not only resorted to patent scams but also let poor people die in the process. We hope that PTAB will soon invalidate all those patents that Allergan is trying to shelter behind tribes. Allergan knows darn well why it's trying to avoid PTAB.

Dennis Crouch also wrote about Allergan. The firm is collapsing, it already faces multiple probes, it is laying off staff and it engages in patent scams. Here is what Crouch said:

There are now about a dozen class-action antitrust lawsuits pending against Allergan that allege “a multi-pronged effort to block generic versions of Restasis from coming to market.

[...]

The outcome of the antitrust lawsuits will at least partially depend upon the pending PTAB IPR proceedings. The patents at issue were invalidated following a bench trial in the E.D.Tex. with Federal Circuit Judge Bryson sitting by designation as the trial court. Allergan has appealed that order.


In this particular case, PTAB does a public service outside the context of patents alone. Allergan's abusive tactics can be stopped by invalidation of key patents.

In other news about PTAB, WiFi One makes another belated appearance. To quote:

The Federal Circuit’s softening of the appeal bar (35 U.S.C. €§ 314(d)) in WiFi One will now allow the Court to consider matters unrelated to the merits of an institution decision, and in some cases, well-established precedent of the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB).


We already wrote several articles about this case. It is worth noting this comment about the EPO, bemoaning the patent microcosm's rants about PTAB:

Lucky this wasn't a US IPR decision. My ears wouldn't have survived the sonic whine from the "IT'S NOT FAAAIIIIIIRRRRRRRR!!!!" brigade. Aeroplanes would have fallen from the sky and satellites knocked out of their orbits, and all because the spoiled brats are throwing their toys out of their prams.

It is NOT a point of law of fundamental importance. All points of law can have deleterious effects, but luckily I, and many others, have studied my subject. Foresight is a wonderful thing!


PTAB is meanwhile being bashed by the patent trolls' lobby (IAM et al). Yesterday we saw the Conservative, Koch-funded lobbyist Adam Mossoff complaining about lobbying and defending patent trolls, as usual. They have a new tactic; seeing that the US is declining, based on press reports, they blame it all on AIA/PTAB/IPRs. Mossoff wrote: "It is lobbying money like this - and the hundreds of millions these companies have spent lobbying over the decade before 2017 - that created the "patent troll" narrative in D.C. and the resulting moral panic about the fundamental role of #patent rights in #innovation economy..."

Mossoff has long denied that patent trolls are a problem (let alone that they exist). Here is another new example (Moskowitz). To quote: “Score another one for Seoul while Silicon Valley slides. The U.S. dropped out of the top 10 in the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index for the first time in the six years the gauge has been compiled. South Korea and Sweden retained their No. 1 & No. 2 rankings.” #AIA #PTAB to blame"

I challenged him on this baseless claim and there's quite a conversation there. He very much refused to accept that other factors played a role in this decline. "This is laughable," I told him, "and a self-serving deception blaming patent reform for US decline..."

He stood firm with his claim nonetheless. IAM soon joined in, arguing things to the same effect. IAM cites the Chamber of Commerce as a source for some drama intended to claim that patent policy (e.g. AIA) has been the cause for a decline of the US. "DC sources tell IAM that Andrei Iancu confirmation vote for @uspto director is expected before mid-February," it said, having also written this blog post about it:

In a confirmation hearing performance that played well with a broad range of stakeholders, Iancu gave every indication of being fully aware of some of the gripes levelled against the US patent system and made a point of calling for balance on more than one occasion. “The accused infringer in one case may be the IP owner in another and a patent owner in one area of technology or science may be a member of the public trying to design around someone else’s patent in another area,” he told the commitee. “The playing field must be even for all.”

[...]

If Iancu is confirmed by the middle of February, then his start in the job will coincide with the US Chamber of Commerce’s launch of its 2018 International IP Index, an analysis of IP regimes around the world in which the US last year slumped to 10th (tied with Hungary) in a ranking of the relative strength of countries’ patent systems. The latest index is due to be published on 8th February and if the US were to slip again it would give Iancu a sense of the scale of the task that he faces.


That last paragraph is pure propaganda from a corporate front group, the Chamber of Commerce.

There is still time to stop this appointment, which is about putting a patent 'industry' mole in charge of the USPTO. It's not hard to envision what he would do.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries