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9 BRIEF OF BSA THE SOFTWARE ALLIANCE AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS INTEREST OF THE AMICUS CURIAE BSA The Software Alliance is an association of the world s leading software and hardware technology companies. On behalf of its members, BSA promotes policies that foster innovation, growth, and a competitive marketplace for commercial software and related technologies. Because patent policy is vitally important to promoting the innovation that has kept the United States at the forefront of software and hardware development, BSA members have a strong stake in the proper functioning of the U.S. patent system. 1 BSA members are among the Nation s leading technology companies, producing much of the hardware and software that power computer and telecommunication networks. Due to the complexity and commercial success of their products, these companies are frequently the subject of patent infringement claims. At the same time, by virtue of their inventions, BSA members hold tens of thousands of patents. Because they are both innovators as well as substantial patent holders, BSA members have a particularly 1 Pursuant to Rule 37.6, amicus affirms that no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part and that no person other than amicus and its counsel made a monetary contribution to its preparation or submission. The parties blanket consent letters to the filing of amicus briefs have been filed with the Clerk s office.
11 3 some 8,000 patent examiners and issues more than 300,000 patents each year. 2 The PTO possesses substantial technical expertise, but its process for determining whether a patent should issue is not perfect. The hundreds of thousands of patent applications that the PTO receives each year and the complexity of many of those applications make it impossible for the Office to identify and review all of the relevant information bearing on the merits of each application. Congress recognizing this problem, and the substantial harm to innovation and competition that result from wrongfully-issued patents has therefore determined that it is necessary to create a backstop procedure to enable correction of errors in the initial examination process. It has established administrative procedures through which the PTO may revisit its decisions to issue a patent and cancel the patent s claims if it finds that the patent, or some of its claims, should not have been granted. The PTO has long had this authority to adjudicate patent validity. As early as the nineteenth century, the PTO adjudicated interference proceedings between a new patent application and an alreadygranted patent (to determine patent priority). More recently, Congress created the ex parte reexamination and inter partes reexamination procedures, both 2 See U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Performance and Accountability Report, Fiscal Year 2016 at 15 (Nov. 14, 2016), 6PAR.pdf (PTO employed 8,351 patent examiners at the end of FY2016); id. at 181 (PTO issued 329,612 patents in FY2014, 322,449 patents in FY2015, and 334,107 patents in FY2016).
13 5 revisit the question of patentability post-grant. Without inter partes review, more wrongfully-issued patents will remain in place, deterring innovation and creating a drag on the Nation s economy. The decision below should accordingly be affirmed. ARGUMENT I. Inter Partes Review Enables The PTO To Correct Its Own Errors And Cancel Wrongfully-Issued Patents That Otherwise Would Deter Innovation And Chill Competition. A. Patent quality is essential to innovation. This Court has explained that a patent is a reward, an inducement, to bring forth new knowledge. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 9 (1966). [T]he promise of exclusive rights provides monetary incentives that lead to creation, invention, and discovery. On the other hand, that very exclusivity can impede the flow of information that might permit, indeed spur, invention. Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 92 (2012). The standards established by Congress for granting a patent strike this balance between fostering innovation and ensuring public access to discoveries. Kimble v. Marvel Entm t, LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2401, (2015). [T]he stringent requirements for patent protection seek to assure that ideas in the public domain remain there for the free use of the public. Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co., 440 U.S. 257, 262 (1979). And there is, accordingly, a strong federal policy that only inventions which meet the rigorous requirements of patentability shall be withdrawn from the public domain. Id. at 264. See also Graham, 383 U.S. at 19.
21 13 which may be rebutted only if the party challenging the patent satisfies the clear and convincing evidence standard. 35 U.S.C. 282(a); Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. P ship, 564 U.S. 91, 95 (2011). The justification for that high evidentiary burden, is that the PTO, in its expertise, has approved the [patent] claim. KSR Int l Co. v. Teleflex Inc, 550 U.S. 398, 426 (2007). If the PTO could not cancel wrongfully-issued patents, the clear and convincing evidence test would shield many of those patents from invalidation because the evidence of invalidity, although strong, is not sufficient to overcome that burden. A procedure before the PTO addresses that concern and ensures that the high evidentiary burden will not protect erroneously-issued patents. Accepting petitioner s argument and invalidating inter partes review would thus eliminate a critically important mechanism for cancelling wrongfullyissued patents, and thereby inflict harm on inventors and consumers alike. 3 Beyond that, petitioner s arguments would effectively doom all PTO review processes for existing patents, because petitioner offers no compelling reason to distinguish inter partes review from ex parte reexamination (or from post-grant review under 35 U.S.C. 321, another review process created by the America Invents Act). Petitioner argues in passing that ex parte reexamination is an interactive proceeding between the agency and the patent owner 3 There may be concerns about aspects of the PTO s implementation of inter partes review, but any such concerns have no bearing on the constitutional questions before the Court.
24 16 purportedly stopped canceling patents after See Gomez-Arostegui & Bottomley Amicus Br. at 35; Alliacense Amicus Br. at 11. But, as these amici concede, patents continued to contain revocation clauses for many years afterwards, and there are records of applications for revocation to the Privy Council in 1782 and See E. Wyndham Hulme, Privy Council Law and Practice of Letters Patent for Invention from the Restoration to 1794, 33 L.Q. Rev. 180, 193 (1917). Whether or not the revocation mechanism was frequently used, it nonetheless plainly remained in existence and provided an alternative to infringement actions in court. 4 Second, the primary purpose of inter partes review is to allow the PTO to correct its own errors and efficiently administer the patent system; it is not a means of resolving disputes between private parties. To be sure, inter partes review may sometimes help avoid or resolve litigation between the patentee and the party that instigates the review. But inter partes review is not limited to claims or parties in litigation; any person other than the patentee can institute an inter partes review (35 U.S.C. 311(a)), and the review can encompass any claim in the patent (id. 311(b)), without regard to whether the petitioning party is alleged to be infringing the patent 4 Suits at law are not appropriate historical precedent for inter partes review in any event. A patent invalidity defense in a suit at law was not a challenge to the patent itself. At most a court could deny relief to the patentee in the case before it because it believed the patent did not comply with the law; it had no power to revoke the patent which is what the PTO does in inter partes review and what the Privy Council did in its proceeding. Mark A. Lemley, Why Do Juries Decide If Patents Are Valid?, 99 Va. L. Rev. 1673, 1682 (2013).
25 17 or any particular claim thereof. Indeed, the petitioning party may lack constitutional standing of any kind, and it need not remain in the proceeding; rather, the [PTO] may continue to conduct an inter partes review even after the adverse party has settled. Cuozzo, 136 S. Ct. at Petitioner is therefore wrong in asserting that the point of inter partes review is to [t]ransfer the adjudication of patent questions from juries to the PTO (Pet. Br. 56), and that inter partes review is a substitute for litigation. Congress designed inter partes review to have a much broader reach, which is why this Court has squarely rejected the argument that inter partes review is a surrogate for court proceedings. Cuozzo, 136 S. Ct. at Third, the principal beneficiary of an inter partes review proceeding is the public. As we have explained, maintaining patent quality is essential to the public interest. Inter partes review thus promotes the public interest in a manner that accords with principles of equity. See, e.g., Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, (1944) ( The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as be- 5 To the extent petitioner s argument is that in practice today many or even most inter partes review proceedings relate to patents that also are the subject of court litigation, that circumstance has no bearing on the constitutionality of Congress s plan, because that plan broadly confers eligibility to institute inter partes review proceedings thus, Article III standing is not required. See 35 U.S.C There is every reason to believe that as inter partes review proceedings become more established, and the rules governing them refined, they will be invoked by broader and different classes of petitioners.
31 23 cancelling wrongfully-issued patents through administrative proceedings. Patent rights exist by virtue of government action, rather than arising inherently through the common law. E.g., Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U.S. 225, 229 n.5 (1964) (noting that patent rights exist only by virtue of statute ); United States v. Line Materials Co., 333 U.S. 287, 345 (1948) (explaining that the patent right * * * is added to the common law right of the inventor * * * by authority of the Constitution and of the federal statutes ). This Court has repeatedly held that where an entitlement is founded on federal law, Congress may entrust its adjudication to a non-article III decision maker even though the interest can be characterized as property. See, e.g., Thomas, 473 U.S. at (pesticide manufacturers claims to compensation from the submitters of follow-on pesticide registration applications could be entrusted by Congress to binding arbitration, because the right to compensation derived from federal law). See also, e.g., Stern, 564 U.S. at 498 (noting that bankruptcy courts non- Article III tribunals may adjudicate right[s] of recovery created by federal bankruptcy law ). Moreover, Congress more than 35 years ago authorized the PTO to review previously-granted patents in ex parte reexaminations. See page 9, supra. Given that patents are issued for 20-year terms (35 U.S.C. 154(a)(2)), any person who applied for a patent that remains extant today did so knowing it was subject to further review by the PTO, either on the PTO s own initiative, by the owner s request, or pursuant to a third party s request.
32 24 No patentee, therefore, can argue that inter partes review upsets any settled expectation about the scope of its rights at the time the patent was granted. Post-grant review by the PTO in the form of inter partes reexamination or inter partes review, depending on the time of the particular patent grant was in the statute at the time the patents were issued. CONCLUSION The judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.
No OIL STATES ENERGY SERVICES, LLC, Petitioner, v. GREENE S ENERGY GROUP, LLC, ET AL., Respondents.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PATENTS: THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT AFFIRMS THE STANDARD OF PROOF FOR PATENT INVALIDITY Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. P ship, 131 S. CT. 2238 (2011) ABSTRACT In Microsoft Corp.
No IN THE Supreme Court of the United States. OIL STATES ENERGY SERVICES, LLC, Petitioner, v.
No IN THE. BAXTER INTERNATIONAL, INC., ET AL., Petitioners, v. FRESENIUS USA, INC., ET AL., Respondents.
No In the Supreme Court of the United States. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Petitioner, v.
2011-1301 United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit CLS BANK INTERNATIONAL, Plaintiff-Appellee, and CLS SERVICES LTD., Counterclaim-Defendant Appellee, v. ALICE CORPORATION PTY. LTD., Defendant-Appellant.
No IN THE Supreme Court of the United States. GREENE S ENERGY GROUP, LLC et al., Respondents.
No. 07-613 In the Supreme Court of the United States D.P. ON BEHALF OF E.P., D.P., AND K.P.; AND L.P. ON BEHALF OF E.P., D.P., AND K.P., Petitioners, v. SCHOOL BOARD OF BROWARD COUNTY, FLORIDA, Respondent.
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 COHO LICENSING LLC, Plaintiff, v. GLAM MEDIA, INC., Defendant. / No. C 1-01 JSW No. C 1-01 JSW No. C 1-01 JSW No.
2015 WL Only the Westlaw citation is currently available. United States District Court, E.D. Texas, Marshall Division.
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD. BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. Petitioner, v.
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD. BUNGIE, INC., Petitioner, ACCELERATION BAY LLC., Patent Owner.
Filed on behalf of: Bungie, Inc. By: Michael T. Rosato (mrosato@wsgr.com) Andrew S. Brown (asbrown@wsgr.com) WILSON SONSINI GOODRICH & ROSATI 701 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5100 Seattle, WA 98104-7036 Paper No.
When is an Attorney Unreasonable and Vexatious?
A (800) (800) REPLY BRIEF. No In the Supreme Court of the United States OPENET TELECOM, INC., OPENET TELECOM LTD.

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