The Patent Trial and Appeal Board publishes monthly statistics tracking numerous aspects of AIA Petition filings and how they are resolved. The AIA Trial Statistics through the end of November 2016 are available here.

Reviewing the data for 2016, the most notable statistic is a significant increase in the number of AIA trials that have been completed to date. A comparison of the November 2016 statistics with the November 2015 statistics shows that the total number of IPR and CBM trials that have reached a final written decision has almost doubled in one year. Specifically, the total number of IPR final written decisions went from 675 in November 2015 to 1332 in November 2016, and the total number of CBM final written decisions went from 83 in November 2015 to 154 in November 2016.

As a result of this increased output from the Board, practitioners going into 2017 have a lot more final decision precedent to pull from than was available this time last year, and should be better positioned to refine their PTAB filings to the expectations of the Board.

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