Source: https://www.oblon.com/motions-to-amend-is-the-ptabs-lectrosonics-order-just-of-western-digital
Timestamp: 2019-03-22 23:31:18
Document Index: 51890941

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 102', '§ 103', '§ 101', '§ 112']

Motions to Amend: Is the PTAB's Lectrosonics Order Just of Western Digital? | Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, L.L.P. — Intellectual Property Law Firm
March 11, 2019 – Article
Spring gardening season has begun and the USPTO is once again planting its Motion to Amend
(“MTA”) seeds. In a substantial redux of Western Digital Corporation v. Spex Technologies, IPR2018-00082,
01129, 01130(“Lectrosonics Order”) as an informative decision.
once a proposed claim includes amendments to address a prior art grounds in the trial, a patent owner also may include additional limitations to address potential § 101 or § 112 issues, if necessary. Allowing an amendment to address such issues, when a given claim is being amended already in view of a 35 U.S.C.§ 102 or § 103 ground, serves the public interest by helping to ensure the patentability of amended claims.
What’s new in the Lectrosonics Order? A panel consisting or acting chief administrative patent judge,
A patent owner may not seek to broaden a challenged claim in any respect that enlarges the scope of the claims of the patent, for example, in the name of responding to an alleged ground of unpatentability. Likewise, a proposed substitute claim may not remove a feature of the claim in a manner that broadens the scope of the claims of the challenged patent …. [A] proposed substitute claim adding a novel and nonobvious feature or combination to avoid the prior art in an instituted ground of unpatentability will not enlarge the scope of the claims of the patent.
Although patent owners are free to present proposed substitute claims to address potential prior
art, § 101 or § 112 issues, any claim change should at least be clarifying in nature if not presented in the
form of a clearly narrowing amendment which meets the “novel and non-obvious feature” standard
articulated in the Lectrosonics Order. If the latter, patent owners should remain mindful that claim features