In the 46 Final Written Decisions issued by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in April, the Board cancelled 651 (88.45%) of the instituted claims and declined to cancel 51 (6.93%) of the instituted claims. Patent owners conceded 34 (4.62%) of the instituted claims through motions to amend or disclaimer. These decision outcomes are considerably worse for patentees than the decisions issued in March 2016, when 65% of all instituted claims were cancelled and nearly 30% of instituted claims survived.
On a per-case basis, no instituted or substitute claims survived in 38 (82.61%) of the decisions, all instituted claims survived in only 2 (4.35%) of the decisions, and a mixed outcome occurred in 6 (13.04%) of the decisions. A mixed outcome occurs where at least one instituted or substitute claim remains patentable, and at least one is cancelled, in a Final Written Decision. These decisions were also significantly less favorable to patentees than the decisions issued in March 2016, where no instituted claims survived in 66.67% of cases and all instituted claims survived in 28.57% of cases.
The following resources are also available on the AIA Blog:
- More detailed cumulative statistics on the Board's IPR and CBM decisions, updated through April 1, 2016
- Lists of the top 10 PTAB judges by panel appearances and authored opinions
- Numbers of final written decisions by technology center
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