By statute, Congress gave the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) broad discretionary power in deciding whether or not to institute an inter partes review (“IPR”) proceeding.[1] Recently, the PTAB’s application of this discretionary authority to deny IPR petitions has continued to be aggressive in frequency and scope.
Several possible rationales for this continued upward trend exist including: (1) docket management, (2) concerns with protecting review process/patent owners from “abuse”, and (3) the SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu decision.[2] Continue reading “Law of the Case? Not in our Forum! Continuing Trend of PTAB Aggressively Using Its Discretionary Powers to Deny Institution of IPRs”