The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTAB) has proposed rules that would prevent inter partes reviews (IPR) challenging patents from being instituted in many scenarios. The proposed rules would require patent challengers to agree not to make many invalidity arguments in other venues, and would prohibit the PTAB from reviewing patents that have already had their validity adjudicated.
“If it went into place in the way it’s written right now, it’s just going to significantly restrict the number of grantable IPR petitions,” Bracewell’s Kit Crumbley, a former PTAB judge, told Law360. He added that “probably by design, it makes IPRs a much less attractive option.”
