The US Patent and Trademark Office is proposing to sharply narrow when a patent’s validity can be challenged in administrative tribunal proceedings. The agency’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) would have to turn away petitions from lawsuit defendants seeking inter partes review (IPR) of patent claims that have previously withstood an attack on their validity based on non-obviousness or novelty, under a proposed rule.
Bracewell’s Kit Crumbley, a former PTAB judge, told Bloomberg Law the sweeping changes in the proposed rulemaking “work to make the world of institute-able IPRs really small.”
