Source: https://www.patentdocs.org/2018/12/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 10:55:58+00:00

Document:
One final 35 U.S.C. § 101 case inched across the finish line at the end of 2018. And while this one is not particularly remarkable substantively, its concurrence from an opinionated judge may give it an unwelcome shelf life.
Applicant Marco Guldenaar Holding B.V. filed U.S. Patent Application No. 13/078,196. During prosecution, the Examiner rejected a number of its claims under § 101 as allegedly being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter (the claims were also rejected as being obvious under § 103). Guldenaar appealed to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, but the Board affirmed the Examiner. Guldenaar then appealed to the Federal Circuit.
paying a payout amount if the at least one wager occurs.
In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, the Supreme Court set forth a two-part test to determine whether claims are directed to patent-eligible subject matter under § 101. One must first decide whether the claim at hand is directed to a judicially-excluded law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea. If so, then one must further decide whether any element or combination of elements in the claim is sufficient to ensure that the claim amounts to significantly more than the judicial exclusion. But elements that are well-understood, routine, and conventional will not lift the claim over the § 101 hurdle.
In its analysis, the Court leaned heavily on its holding from 2016's In re Smith. In that case, the Court found that claims directed to a method of playing a card game failed to meet the § 101 requirements. The Court's rationale for this decision was that the claimed invention was a method of conducting a wagering game, and thus tantamount to the methods of exchanging financial obligations found ineligible in Alice and Bilski v. Kappos.
Guldenaar argued that the Board improperly categorized the invention as an abstract idea under an overly-broad label: "methods of organizing human activities." The Court sympathized with Guldenaar, even noting that "this phrase can be confusing and potentially misused, since, after all, a defined set of steps for combining particular ingredients to create a drug formulation could be categorized as a method of organizing human activity." But the Court also observed that the Board further categorized the invention as being "rules for playing games" -- a more specific type of abstract idea.
Importantly, the Court did not hold that game rules are per se patent-ineligible. Quoting Smith, the Court wrote that "[a]bstract ideas, including a set of rules for a game, may be patent-eligible if [the claims] contain an 'inventive concept' sufficient to 'transform' the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application." But this acknowledgment did not help Guldenaar as the Court also stated that "[t]he claims here recite the steps of placing a wager, rolling the dice, and paying a payout amount if at least one wagered outcome occurs—none of which Appellant on appeal disputes is conventional, either alone or in combination." Thus, under the second step of Alice, "the claimed activities here are purely conventional and are insufficient to recite an inventive concept."
Guldenaar made a further argument, that "the specifically-claimed dice that have markings on one, two, or three die faces are not conventional and their recitation in the claims amounts to significantly more than the abstract idea." Applying printed matter doctrine, the Court rejected this notion, stating that "the printed indicia on each die are not functionally related to the substrate of the dice."
In his final substantive argument, Guldenaar contended that "playing a dice game cannot be an abstract idea because it recites a physical game with physical steps." The Court disagreed, noting that "the abstract idea exception does not turn solely on whether the claimed invention comprises physical versus mental steps" and that the ineligible inventions of Alice and Bilski both required actions in the physical world. Still, the Court reiterated that "inventions in the gaming arts are not necessarily foreclosed from patent protection under § 101" while ultimately finding the claims unpatentable under § 101.
Guldenaar also made a procedural argument, that the Board improperly treated claim 1 as representative of all claims. The Court, however, remarked that "Appellant's appeal brief to the Board included two claim group headings under its § 101 argument: one under which all rejected claims were discussed generally, and another under which Appellant merely quoted claim elements in dependent claims 10, 18, 24, and 26." Invoking Rule 41.37(c)(1)(iv), the Court explained that "for an applicant to receive separate consideration by the Board for each of its appealed claims, an applicant's appeal brief must contain substantive argument beyond a mere recitation of the claim elements." Thus, the Court found that the Board reasonably grouped all claims together with claim 1 being representative.
Judge Mayer is no stranger to the incendiary § 101 concurrence -- look no further than Intellectual Ventures I v. Symantec Corp. or Ultramercial v. Hulu. Here, once again, he pushed back against holdings of the Federal Circuit (i.e., the law) with his personal opinions about the patent-eligibility (or the lack thereof) of software.
First, subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is a pure question of law, one that can, and should, be resolved at the earliest stages of litigation. Second, claims directed to dice, card, and board games can never meet the section 101 threshold because they endeavor to influence human behavior rather than effect technological change.
There are three assertions masked as two in his statement, so let's take them apart.
Is subject matter eligibility a pure question of law? As of today, the answer is a clear and resolute "no!" And this is not just the opinion of a commentator, but that of the Federal Circuit in Berkheimer v. HP and a number of following decisions. At this point, a majority of the Court's judges accept that, in practice, many § 101 inquiries require at least some baseline factual analysis. The reason why the Court concluded so was to address the conundrum of having to determine whether elements of a claim were well-understood, routine, and conventional as a matter of law. Making this determination almost always involves some amount of comparison of claim language to what would ordinarily be called "prior art."
Judge Mayer quoted a number of decisions for the premise that "[e]ligibility questions mostly involve general historical observations, the sort of findings routinely made by courts deciding legal questions." And yet, the Berkheimer case itself involved a factual dispute that was far more than a matter of historical observation -- whether the claimed invention recites a combination of elements that improved the performance of a computer. Even the Supreme Court's Bilski opinion referenced textbooks in order to establish that the claimed hedging procedure was a well-known economic practice. It is without dispute that not all § 101 questions can be resolved by referring to mere historical facts worthy of judicial notice. A deeper analysis is often necessary especially in the realm of complex software inventions.
Should subject matter eligibility issues be resolved at the earliest stages of litigation? This is a more nuanced question, and the ultimate answer is "only in some cases." Nevertheless, Judge Mayer reiterated his concurrence in Ultramercial, stating that "[r]esolving subject matter eligibility challenges early conserves scarce judicial resources, provides a bulwark against vexatious infringement suits, and protects the public by expeditiously removing the barriers to innovation created by vague and overbroad patents." Ignoring the unsupported assertions in the second half of this claim, the notion that being able to easily invalidate issued patents (which are presumed to be valid) during the pleadings stage and before the claims are fully construed is problematic at best.
To make an admittedly hyperbolic analogy, if there were no Fourth Amendment right for the government to establish reasonable cause prior to arresting and charging individuals with crimes, more criminals would end up in prison. But so would more innocent people, which is already a significant problem. Analogously, the sharp knife of a reinvigorated § 101 has been able to eliminate, early in litigation, a number of patents that probably should not have been granted by the USPTO. But the good patents are also taken down with the bad, and the value of many software patents has dropped due to the lingering unpredictability of the Alice test. Given the importance of software innovation to the U.S. economy, being able to invalidate such patents based on a less than thorough application of a vague judge-made rule is a questionable practice.
The fault line for patent eligibility generally runs along the divide between man and machine. Simply put, while new machines and mechanized processes can potentially be patent eligible, ideas about how to improve or influence human thought and behavior fail to pass section 101 muster. This is why claims telling people how to mitigate settlement risk, how to hedge against risk in consumer transactions, or how to play a game of cards, are directed to non-statutory subject matter.
This is not the law, and for good reason. Trying to divide an invention into the technological and human parts is often an exercise in futility. The patent-eligible invention of DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com was a hybrid web site meant to attract visitors with a familiar look and feel. Is that a technological or business-oriented invention? Depending how you look at it, either answer is possible. The same could be said for self-driving car software that attempts to predict or influence the behavior of human drivers, as well as a neural-network-based machine learning system that makes photographs more pleasing to the human eye.
Trying to answer Judge Mayer's machine versus human inquiry is, in practice, as difficult as defining the term "abstract idea" and just as unworkable. Under his rubric, inventions that require significant technical advances can be viewed as directed to "organizing human behavior," and therefore deemed ineligible just because the invention came about with the goal of changing such behavior. In a more rational worldview, whether the goal or the outcome of an invention involves a human element should be completely irrelevant -- instead the question to ask is whether the invention involves a focused and significant advance over the state of the art.
In sum, Judge Mayer doesn't like software patents. But his broad, sweeping language should not be mistaken for the current state of § 101 affairs, nor should it be used to influence our thought or behavior regarding such affairs.
January 8, 2019 - "New EU Guidelines for Patenting AI and Machine Learning Technologies: Comparison With U.S. Approach -- Navigating EPO and USPTO Rules to Maximize Patent Protection" (Strafford) - 1:00 to 2:30 pm (EST).
The authors and contributors of Patent Docs wish their readers and families a Happy Holidays. Publication of Patent Docs will resume on December 26th.
As reported by numerous media outlets (see "Partial government shutdown likely to continue until after Christmas"), the U.S. Senate adjourned this afternoon without coming to an agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the United States Government. The government shutdown is the third shutdown of the federal government this year. While the shutdown could end as soon as Monday, when the Senate has a pro forma session scheduled, the shutdown could continue past the next actual session of the Senate on Thursday, December 27. The shutdown is the result of a debate over $5.7 billion dollars in funding for a border wall.
Regardless of when the shutdown ends, however, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has indicated in a short notice posted on its website that the Office will remain "open for business as normal" -- at least during the first "few weeks" of the shutdown (were the shutdown to last that long). The USPTO is able to stay open because of its "access to prior-year fee collections."
We will monitor and report on the USPTO's operating status as the government shutdown continues.
With this shutdown once again focusing the patent community's attention on the USPTO's operating status, experienced practitioners have probably been reminding their less tenured colleagues that the USPTO will be open on Monday, December 24. Ordinarily, that would be true, as the USPTO is normally closed only on federal holidays, which includes Christmas Day, but not Christmas Eve.
This year, however, the USPTO will also be closed on December 24 because of the official closing of federal government offices in Washington, DC on December 24. The Christmas Eve closing is the result of an executive order issued by President Trump on Tuesday, in which the President ordered "[a]ll executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government . . . closed and their employees excused from duty on Monday, December 24, 2018, the day before Christmas Day." The President also indicated in the order that "[t]he heads of executive departments and agencies may determine that certain offices and installations of their organizations, or parts thereof, must remain open and that certain employees must report for duty on December 24, 2018, for reasons of national security, defense, or other public need."
In view of the official closing of the Federal Government offices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), on Monday, December 24, 2018, the USPTO will consider Monday, December 24, 2018, to be a 'Federal holiday within the District of Columbia' under 35 U.S.C. § 21 and 37 C.F.R. §§ 1.6, 1.7, 1.9, 2.2(d), 2.195, and 2.196.
[A]ny action or fee due on Monday, December 24, 2018, or Tuesday, December 25, 2018, will be deemed as timely for the purposes of, e.g., 15 U.S.C. §§ 1051(d), 1058, 1059, 1062(b), 1063, 1064, 1126(d), and 1141k, or 35 U.S.C. §§ 119, 120, 133, and 151, if the action is taken, or the fee paid, on the next succeeding business day on which the USPTO is open, that is, Wednesday, December 26, 2018 (37 C.F.R. §§ 1.7(a) and 2.196), no later than 11:59 pm EST.
Thus, applicants and practitioners can -- for this year at least -- wait until December 26 to take actions that would otherwise be due on December 24.
From Whence the Yersinia pestis that Caused the Black Death?
The plague, that variety of human ailments caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria, is mythic in human history, a nightmare disease carried by fleas infesting rats, a species that is omnipresent in human civilizations. Its spread in earlier times was a nascent harbinger of the much more global spread of disease today, due to the greater reach of modern transportation compared with, inter alia, sailing ships and overland caravans. The precise nature and pattern of earlier outbreaks is relatively unknown, however, and their routes of transmission somewhat speculative. In view of the consequences of a plague pandemic today (despite the existence of antibiotics, still a risk due to supply chain weaknesses and other factors) this lack of knowledge is relevant to understanding and forestalling modern global public health risks.
A group of international researchers* recently addressed these questions, in a paper entitled "Integrative approach using Yersinia pestis genomes to revisit the historical landscape of plague during the Medieval Period" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As explained in the paper, there have been three great plague pandemics in human history. The first started during the reign of the Emperor Justinian in 541-542 CE and lasted until the eighth century in Europe (the subject of William Rosen's book, Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire). The second, and most famous, was the Black Death that lasted for a much shorter time in Western Europe (1346-1353) but killed at least 30% of the population on the continent. The most recent outbreak, beginning in 1772 and ongoing today, is limited to Yunnan Province in China. The persistence of plague is due to its nature as an infection of animals other than humans (a zoonosis) that sometimes "spills over" into human populations. (Similar etiologies exist in other less dramatic diseases, for example, sleeping sickness transmitted by the tsetse fly and endemic in African ungulate populations.) The animal populations that constitute "plague reservoirs" are well known today; this paper endeavors to reconstruct the sources of the Black Death plague pandemic.
The evidence adduced by these researchers come from genomic DNA sequencing of five ancient plague genomes recovered from human teeth of plague victims from four archeological sites: Abbadia San Salvatore (BSS) (Italy), Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse (SLC) (France), Bergen op Zoom (BER) (The Netherlands), and Oslo (OSL) (Norway), all dated from the 14th Century.
Sequencing was also performed from samples dating from the Justinian epidemic as well as modern Y. pestis samples; DNA from a related bacteria, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, was used for outgroup comparison. In total, comparison of 126 modern Y. pestis genomes with 15 ancient genomes from the Bronze Age and the First and the Second Pandemics resulted in 2,826 polymorphic sites, further characterized as comprising 1,456 nonsynonymous SNPs, 625 synonymous SNPs, and 745 intergenic SNPs.
Overall, evidence from different disciplines increasingly suggests successive and independent introductions of plague to Western Europe via the transport of infected individuals and goods on trade routes during the Second Plague Pandemic. By analyzing five ancient genomes from the Second Plague Pandemic, adding them to the established Y. pestis phylogeny, and evaluating them with a historical background, our study aimed to answer some of the most debated questions on plague in Western Europe during the Second Plague Pandemic. All things considered, the hypothesis that Y. pestis reached Europe through multiple introductions during the Middle Ages through different routes, including the fur trade, appears very plausible, at least during the Second Plague Pandemic.
As with many other examples (The Domestication History of Apples Revealed by Genomic Analysis; Genetic Assessment of Squash Genomes in Related Species; Silver Birch Genetics Explained), this paper illustrates how combining genetic analysis with other disciplines can shed light on historical occurrences having important consequences today.
The Supreme Court changed the calculus on what conduct satisfies the "exceptional case" criteria for awarding attorney's fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285 in its Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness Inc. and Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Mgmt. Sys., Inc. decisions. Under this clarifying precedent, the standard for finding an exceptional case in patent law was based on judicial discretion: district courts should exercise this discretion considering the totality of the circumstances and "in light of the considerations' underlying the grant of that discretion." Since these decisions, prevailing parties have increasingly sought and district courts have increasingly granted motions for finding a case exceptional and awarded attorneys' fees and other sanctions on this basis. Last Friday, the Federal Circuit rendered an opinion, in Spineology, Inc. v. Wright Medical Technology, Inc. seeking to rein in the more vigorous assertions of the exceptional case doctrine under these Supreme Court precedents.
an manually actuated activation mechanism that moves the set of blades from the first retracted position to the second fully expanded position and any expanded position therebetween.
The District Court did not adopt either party's proposed meaning in its claim construction order. Thereafter, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment on infringement and the District Court ruled in defendant Wright Technology's favor (a decision affirmed by the Federal Circuit in an earlier appeal). In granting Wright's motion, the District Court adopted Wright's definition of the term "body" in the claims. This decision prompted Wright to seek attorneys' fees, contending that the case was exceptional based on plaintiff's construction of the term "body," damages theories asserted (but never pursued because the case was decided on summary judgment) and "litigation conduct." The District Court did not grant the motion, holding that Spineology's claim construction and its damages theories were "not so meritless" as to warrant a finding that this was an exceptional case, and that "[n]othing about this case stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of Spineology's litigating position or the manner in which the case was litigated."
The Federal Circuit affirmed, in an opinion by Judge Moore joined by Chief Judge Prost and Judge Dyk. In citing the standard of review, abuse of discretion, the Court acknowledged the high bar Wright was required to clear to convince an appellate court to overturn the decision below. With regard to Wright's first argument, that Spineology's proposed definition for the term "body" was so unreasonable as to be meritless and thus pursuing it after the District Court declined to adopt it, the opinion punctures it with three words: "[w]e are unpersuaded." The panel cites to SFA Sys., LLC v. Newegg Inc., 793 F.3d 1344, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2015), for the principle that "[a] party's position . . . ultimately need not be correct for them not to 'stand out'," and states that "Wright cannot fairly criticize Spineology for continuing to pursue a construction not adopted by the district court in the claim construction order, since the district court declined to adopt Wright's proposed construction as well."
Wright asks this court to basically decide the damages issues mooted by summary judgment in order to determine whether it ought to obtain attorney fees for the entire litigation. This we will not do. We will not force the district court, on a motion for attorney fees, to conduct the trial it never had . . . and we—an appellate court—will certainly not conduct that trial in the first instance.
A district court need not, as Wright seems to urge, litigate to resolution every issue mooted by summary judgment to rule on a motion for attorney fees. And we need not, as Wright requests, get into the weeds on issues the district court never reached. . . . We see no error in the district court's determination that, on this record, the case was not exceptional, and we caution future litigants to tread carefully in their complaints about district courts not doing enough.
Finally, with regard to the litigation (mis)conduct basis for Wright's appeal, in addition to being unpersuaded the Federal Circuit takes its own admonition against "get[ting] into the weeds" by relying on the District Court's better understanding of the issues, saying that the District Court is in a better position to make these determinations (citing similar language in the Highmark case). The panel also rejected Wright's request to remand for further argument on the "totality of the circumstances," saying that it sees no evidence of abuse of discretion by the District Court, and that "[t]he district court 'had no obligation to write an opinion that reveals [its] assessment of every consideration,' and remand is unnecessary to obtain one," citing Univ. of Utah v. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 851 F.3d 1317, 1323 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
The opinion put the rhetorical cherry on top of its holding by awarding costs to Spineology. Whether this case remains an outlier or warning for trial counsel to take heed of the need to plead carefully regarding an award of attorneys' fees and determination of exceptional case status remains to be seen, but district courts will certainly appreciate the extent to which the prudent exercise of their discretion remains tantamount before the Federal Circuit on these questions.
Opening scene . . . our intrepid patent attorney arrives early at her office for a productive day at work. With morning coffee sitting next to her monitor, she opens her email. She finds a few messages from clients and colleagues, as well as a new office action from the USPTO. Curious, she opens the Office action and scans through it, only to find that it contains yet another 35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection applying the dreaded Electric Power Group LLC v. Alstom S.A. decision.
When it first came down from the Federal Circuit, many patent attorneys just shrugged about the case. It was just another § 101 opinion that found claims patent-ineligible. It didn't seem to break much in the way of new ground. But in Electric Power Group, Judge Taranto wrote that the claimed invention was directed to an unpatentable abstract idea because it merely involved "a process of gathering and analyzing information of a specified content, then displaying the results." A few short weeks later, USPTO examiners were using this language to contend that virtually any invention that involves input, processing, and output was similarly abstract. And more than two years later, Electric Power Group remains the proverbial big hammer that makes software claims look like nails.
Why has Electric Power Group had such a large and lasting impact? And how should our patent attorney craft her response in order to be well-positioned to overcome the rejection?
Though lengthy, this claim is broader than it initially appears due to its use of the disjunctive at several points. Nonetheless, it looks narrow at first blush.
As alluded to above, Judge Taranto characterized the claims as focused on "collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis." For each of these three steps, he cited to precedent that found similar claim elements to be abstract. He further determined that there was nothing non-abstract in the combination thereof.
This particular choice of language is problematic for software-based inventions. All a computer can do is receive input, process data, and provide output. Thus, if the thrust of an invention is on a particularly innovative way of doing such receiving, processing, and outputting, it is all too easy for the USPTO to make an analogy to Electric Power Group in order to contend that the associated claims are nothing more than an abstract idea. And examiners have taken an expansive view of the case.
Nonetheless, hope is not lost for our patent attorney or for the rest of us. A careful reading of Electric Power Group itself suggests how one should rebut such a rejection.
The claims in Electric Power Group were found to be ineligible under § 101 for two main reasons: (i) the claims were focused entirely on the gathering, processing, and displaying information with no technical improvement thereof, and (ii) the claims were not limited to a specific solution to a problem but instead claimed the result.
[T]he court reasoned, "there is a critical difference between patenting a particular concrete solution to a problem and attempting to patent the abstract idea of a solution to the problem in general." Electric Power Group's asserted claims, the court observed, do the latter: rather than claiming "some specific way of enabling a computer to monitor data from multiple sources across an electric power grid," some "particular implementation," they "purport to monopolize every potential solution to the problem"—any way of effectively monitoring multiple sources on a power grid. Whereas patenting a particular solution "would incentivize further innovation in the form of alternative methods for achieving the same result," the court concluded, allowing claims like Electric Power Group's claims here would "inhibit innovation by prohibiting other inventors from developing their own solutions to the problem without first licensing the abstract idea.
These observations provide the roadmap for a response. To the extent possible, which will vary based on the claims at hand, one should argue that one's claims suffer from neither of the enumerated deficiencies. It is particularly beneficial to be able to assert that the claims under consideration involve a highly-specific set of operations that provide a clear technical benefit (e.g., faster processing, less memory utilization, the ability to carry out tasks that were previously unworkable, etc.). Thus, one can state that the claims go well beyond merely gathering, processing, and displaying information and instead involve a particularly inventive technical improvement to a specific device or field.
It is also helpful to be able to state that the claims do not recite just an aspirational goal or a desired outcome. Instead, the claims should be focused on solving a particular technical problem and recite discrete steps that can be taken to obtain this solution.
But beyond these two points, both of which can be used to rebut an Electric Power Group rejection, it is important to know that claims that are directed to receiving input, processing, and providing output are not per se ineligible under § 101. Notably, just a few weeks after Electric Power Group the Federal Circuit also decided McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc.
In McRO, the disputed invention was directed to generating animations of facial expressions that match a given sequence of phonemes. This was accomplished through the application of morph weights to points on an animated face based on the timing of phoneme sub-sequences. The invention of McRO was carried out entirely in software operating on a general-purpose computer -- and essentially consisted of receiving, processing and displaying data.
The Federal Circuit found that the claims were not abstract because they represented a technical improvement and there was "no evidence that the process previously used by animators is the same as the process required by the claims." Thus, the McRO claims were distinguished from the patent-ineligible claims of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, Parker v. Flook, and Bilski v. Kappos, cases in which the invention being claimed was performed by computer in the same way it had previously been carried out. Notably, the rule-based claims of McRO could be carried out manually. And yet, the Court found the claims eligible because they recited an unconventional procedure that had not previously been carried out manually.
Clearly, the McRO panel was aware of Electric Power Group -- Judge Taranto joined the unanimous opinion of McRO. Thus, McRO stands for the principle that inventions involving nothing more than software operating on a general purpose computer can be patent-eligible. This goes a long way toward de-clawing and reducing the scope of Electric Power Group.
Thus, one should argue that the claimed invention is analogous to the eligible claims of McRO -- a software-based improvement that is limited to the practical application of a specific set of operations that require computer implementation. Any presence of data gathering processing, and output in the claims is not dispositive. Instead, the USPTO must consider the advance provided by the invention as a whole. And it is particularly compelling if there is nothing in the record that even suggests that the invention was previously performed manually.
Our patent attorney rolls her eyes and smiles, knowing what arguments and claim amendments can effectively rebut the dreaded Electric Power Group rejection. She dockets the response for handling and goes on to enjoy her coffee, secure in the knowledge that she's got this one.
1. Under 35 U.S.C. § 315(c) may a petitioner be joined to a proceeding in which it is already a party?
2. Does 35 U.S.C. § 315(c) permit joinder of new issues into an existing proceeding?
3. Does the existence of a time bar under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b), or any other relevant facts, have any impact on the first two questions?
I have written an article entitled "A Cautionary Note to the PTAB: Proppant, Joinder, and PTAB's Rulemaking-by-Adjudication—How to Avoid Brazen Defiance of the APA and a Rerun of Aqua Products." Proppant sets the PTAB down a path almost identical to that at issue in last year's decision by the Federal Circuit, Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal, 872 F.3d 1290, 124 USPQ2d 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2017). Recall that in Aqua Products, the en banc Federal Circuit set aside a rule that the PTAB had promulgated by precedential decision, with none of the incidents for statutory rulemaking. Of the nine Federal Circuit judges that reached the issue, seven agreed on a simple principle: "[t]he Patent Office cannot effect an end-run around [the APA] by conducting rulemaking through adjudication."
* Proppant seems to be setting up near-identical facts, perhaps with an eye to setting up a challenge or rematch on the Federal Circuit's Aqua decision. The rationale for the PTAB to retest the law, and distinctions from Aqua, are unclear. The article considers several possible theories, and shows how each reflects a misunderstanding of law.
* The PTAB gave no notice of Proppant, other than a "nothing special" order in PTABE2E—no notice in the Federal Register (as required by statute), no notice via email to those that had signed up for notice via the PTAB's email list, no mention on the PTAB's "precedential and informative decisions" page, no mention on the "Patent Trial and Appeal Board Alerts" widget on the MyUSPTO web page. The only mechanism by which the public gained any notice was the Patently-O blog. A blog is not a substitute for a statutory requirement. Again, it's not clear what the PTAB's goal might be in neglecting to give statutorily-required notice.
* Proppant gives the public only 25 days to comment. The amicus brief processes at ABA, AIPLA, IPO, etc run well over 30 days. The implausibility of the 25-day briefing period is further exacerbated because it runs December 3 to 28, which means several days are carved out for Christmas, and everyone has gotten a late start because of the PTO's failure to provide meaningful notice. Executive Order 12,866 suggests that 60 days should be the norm. Perhaps a rule that arises from Proppant will be covered by the Paperwork Reduction Act, in which case 60 days for public comment is required. It's not clear whether Proppant is designed to obtain public input, or to shut it down.
* By sidestepping the statutorily-required Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register, the PTO sidesteps the Administrative Procedure Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, and a number of executive orders that are designed to help agencies consider and act in the public interest.
* The PTAB's procedural lapses could have been prevented had the PTO implemented suggestions it received in past notice-and-comment periods. Notice-and-comment letters that could have improved the PTO's regulatory process have selectively "disappeared" from the PTO's web site.
My article shows that lapses of administrative law are not confined to Gil Hyatt (a petition for rehearing of Hyatt v. PTO is currently pending, as discussed on Patently-O (see "Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem"), nor are lapses confined to individual examiners.
The article offers suggestions for parties appearing before the PTAB, when they face an adverse ruling based on an invalidly-promulgated rule, and for the PTAB to adjust its rulemaking processes to avoid another Aqua Products loss.
* David Boundy, The PTAB is Not an Article III Court, Part 1: A Primer on Federal Agency Rule Making, ABA Landslide 10:2, pp. 9-13, 51-57 (Nov-Dec. 2017) (avaiable here or here) gives an overview of the law of rulemaking, including a taxonomy of various terms like "substantive," "procedural," "interpretative," and "legislative." At the March 2018 Federal Circuit Judicial Conference, Judge Plager recommended this article to the entire patent bar.
* David Boundy and Andrew B. Freistein, The PTAB Is Not an Article III Court, Part 2: Aqua Products v. Matal as a Case Study in Administrative Law, ABA Landslide 10:5, pp. 44-51, 64 (May-Jun. 2018) (available here). As the title suggests, this article takes an in-depth look at the failures of rulemaking law that underlay Aqua. Proppant seems to be headed down almost exactly the same path as in Aqua, so this article might help the PTAB avoid a similar outcome.
* David Boundy, The PTAB is Not an Article III Court, Part 3: Precedential and Informative Decisions, forthcoming in AIPLA Quarterly Journal (available here) explains exactly what the PTAB can do and can't by precedential or informative decision, and gives some examples of proper and improper "precedential" and "informative" designations. Again, the general principles in this article may be helpful to the Proppant panel.
* David Boundy is a partner at Cambridge Technology Law. He may be reached at DBoundy@CambridgeTechLaw.com.
McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP will be offering a live webinar on the "Top Patent Law Stories of 2018" on January 16, 2019 from 10:00 am to 11:15 am (CT). Since 2007, the Patent Docs weblog has presented an annual, end-of-the-year review of the top stories in patent law. In this presentation, Patent Docs co-authors Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, and Michael Borella will take a look back at the top patent stories of 2018, many of which will likely impact patent applicants and practitioners in the coming year.

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 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 101
 v. 
 § 101
 § 101
 § 101
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 315
 § 315
 § 315
 v. 
 v. 
 v.