Claim Construction Standard and Appellate Review Authority in Post-Grant Proceedings
On January 15, 2016, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee to address two important questions relating to inter partes review proceedings:
Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that, in IPR proceedings, the Board may construe claims in an issued patent according to their broadest reasonable interpretation ("BRI") rather than their plain and ordinary meaning.
Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that, even if the Board exceeds its statutory authority in instituting an IPR proceeding, the Board's decision whether to institute an IPR proceeding is judicially unreviewable.1
The dispute arose out of a petition for inter partes review ("IPR") filed by Garmin International, Inc. ("Garmin"), of claims 10, 14, and 17 of U.S. Patent No. 6,778,074 owned by Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC ("Cuozzo").2 The Board denied all grounds on which the challenge to claims 10 and 14 were based, but nevertheless applied to those claims combinations of prior art that Garmin had only cited with respect to claim 17. The Board then instituted IPR for all three claims. The Board subsequently held all three claims to be unpatentable on the same grounds for which it had instituted IPR, and in doing so, applied the BRI, rather than the ordinary meaning, of a key claim term.3 Garmin and Cuozzo settled, but the PTO intervened to defend the Board's decision on appeal.
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Footnotes
1 Docket No. 15-446.
2 Petition for Inter Partes Review, No. IPR2012-00001, Paper No. 1 (Sept. 16, 2012).
3 Final Written Decision, IPR2012-00001, Paper No. 59 (Nov. 13, 2013).
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