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Tactical Considerations for Patent Owner Responses in IPRs

By Susan Perng Pan
October 02, 2017

The America Invents Act established a specialty tribunal known as the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to review the patentability of claims via an inter partes review (IPR) process. IPRs have given patent infringement defendants and would-be defendants a means to challenge the viability of patent claims after the patent grant. U.S. Patent Office statistics (as of May 2017) show that the Board has found at least one claim of a challenged patent to be unpatentable in over 80% of IPRs which become instituted for trial and which reach a Final Written Decision. Given these odds, and the fact that institution of an IPR is not appealable, a patent owner's best shot at preserving its patent rights intact is to defeat institution of the IPR trial in the first instance.

Preliminary Response

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