The USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("PTAB") recently issued its first final written decision under the new inter partes review process made available in 2012 by the America Invents Act. In Garmin Int'l Inc. v. Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, IPR2012-00001, Paper 59 (PTAB Nov. 13, 2013), the PTAB invalidated Cuozzo's patent on the grounds that it would have been obvious to combine three or four prior art references in various ways to arrive at the claimed invention.
The decision is especially noteworthy because patent invalidity arguments based on complex combinations of prior art references are seldom successful in district court litigation – largely due to the difficulties jurors have grappling with complex patent law concepts and sometimes very technical fact patterns. Accordingly, the Garmin v. Cuozzo decision signals to companies accused of patent infringement that the PTAB may be a better venue than the federal courts to litigate the validity of an asserted patent.
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