Petitioners and patent owners involved in inter partes review (IPR) and covered business methods (CBM) review face significant new uncertainties after the U.S. Supreme Court’s grant of certoriari in Cuozzo v. Lee in mid-January. The high court agreed to address two questions: (1) whether the USPTO acted within its rulemaking authority by adopting “broadest reasonable interpretation” claim construction in AIA proceedings; and (2) whether a party may challenge, on appeal to the Federal Circuit, any part of the PTO’s decision to institute an IPR.
Our panel includes a litigator and a law firm professor with extensive appellate experience in patent law, as well as a top PTAB litigator. They will discuss the options open to the Court, including whether the Justices need to consider whether to give Chevron deference to the USPTO in AIA matters. They also will give timely advice on what to do now to the petitioners and patent owners involved in more than 2,000 cases presently pending at varying stages of the PTAB pipeline: pretrial at PTAB, including petition and preliminary response; trial phase at PTAB; after Final Written Decision; already filed an appeal to the Federal Circuit; before or at oral argument to the Federal Circuit; after oral argument but before Federal Circuit opinion.
Speakers:
Prof. John Duffy, University of Virginia School of Law
Thomas Saunders, WilmerHale
Jon Wright, Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox