TAPP Signs onto Coalition Letter to USPTO in Regard to Improving Practices for Instituting Inter Partes Review Challenges
The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity recently signed onto a letter to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) sent in response to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to improve the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) practices for instituting inter partes review (IPR) challenges.
In part, the coalition wrote, “Congress, in the America Invents Act (AIA), intended IPRs to be a faster, cheaper alternative to district court patent litigation. That promise has not been kept. Instead, PTAB provides mammoth incumbent corporations, their allies, and foreign national champions a second front to attack valuable patents until they wear them down or invalidate them through years of serial and duplicative challenges, facing challenger friendly rules in PTAB patent validity cases. More than half of IPR petitions are repeat challenges, while more than 80 percent of IPRs duplicate ongoing litigation. Thus, multiple PTAB challenges perpetuate uncertainty, deny patent owners quiet title, and impose extra costs that reduce the inventor’s investment in R&D for commercialization. USPTO’s proposal delivers the ‘one bite at the apple’ Congress said it was making law… We strongly support this reform-minded NPRM because it advances fairness, due process, and predictability. We deeply appreciate your and USPTO’s leadership on this proinnovation, proeconomic growth rule. We ask you to weigh in at this juncture and help get this crucially important rule across the goal line, which would be your legacy.”