AIA trials are now more than three years old. Many final written decisions (FWDs) in AIA trials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) have made it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has issued judgments addressing more than 40 FWDs related to AIA trials. And as of the beginning of September 2015, the Federal Circuit reported having 313 pending appeals from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, many of which are appeals from AIA trials. It is essential for patent counsel to keep up with the Federal Circuit's issued rulings as well as the upcoming raft of decisions, so we created some tools to help.
We are pleased to announce that Finnegan's AIA Blog now tracks the Federal Circuit's decisions from AIA trials and sorts them by proceeding type. The " Decisions" tab under the AIA Blog banner allows you to select a type of proceeding, such as Federal Circuit decisions addressing FWDs in inter partes reviews. The resulting page displays the PTAB case name and number, the FWD date, the Federal Circuit's case number and decision date, and the result of the decision (affirmed, reversed, etc.). Clicking the PTAB case number brings up the FWD being appealed. Clicking the Federal Circuit case number pulls up the Federal Circuit's opinion. And if Finnegan has summarized a case, clicking the case name will bring up the summary.
Because the Federal Circuit has liberally issued Rule 36 affirmances in AIA trials, we track those decisions separately on the blog. Rule 36 affirmances simply state that the judgment below is affirmed, so they offer less guidance to practitioners than the Federal Circuit's other written opinions. Thus, practitioners wishing to locate only decisions with written discussions can easily find them without having to wade through the Rule 36 affirmances. But for those interested in reading the types of decisions that the Federal Circuit has affirmed without discussion, they can easily access those decisions by pulling up the appropriate Rule 36 Decisions page on the blog and then clicking on the PTAB case number to review the affirmed decision.
Finally, the AIA Blog now features links to our Federal Circuit Court Decisions page on www.finnegan.com. Under the "Decisions" menu on the AIA Blog, clicking any of the CAFC Decisions links will take you to www.finnegan.com and will automatically filter the decisions by the selected proceeding type, such as inter partes review or covered business method review. We also revamped the filtering capability at finnegan.com to more easily find Federal Circuit decisions related to PTAB cases. You can now find decisions from any type of PTAB proceeding or you can limit your search to cases involving appeals from inter partes reviews, covered business method reviews, post-grant reviews, derivation proceedings, interferences, reexaminations, and prosecution appeals.
We hope that making this information more easily accessible will prove useful.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
