In the 63 Final Written Decisions issued by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in March, the Board cancelled 559 (65.00%) of the instituted claims and declined to cancel 251 (29.19%) of the instituted claims. Patent owners conceded 50 (5.81%) of the instituted claims through motions to amend or disclaimer. These numbers are considerably better for patentees than the February 2016 numbers, where 79.45% of all instituted claims were cancelled and only 18.12% of instituted claims survived.
On a per-case basis, no instituted or substitute claims survived in 42 (66.67%) of the decisions, all instituted claims survived in 18 (28.57%) of the decisions, and a mixed outcome occurred in 3 (4.76%) 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 numbers are also significantly more favorable to patentees than the February 2016 numbers, where no instituted claims survived in 82.86% of cases and all instituted claims survived in only 5.71% 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
Various other PTAB metrics collected and generated by Finnegan are reserved for the use of Finnegan and its clients.
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.
