Headquartered within steps of the USPTO with an affiliate office in Tokyo, Oblon is one of the largest law firms in the United States focused exclusively on intellectual property law.
1968
Norman Oblon with Stanley Fisher and Marvin Spivak launched what was to become Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, LLP, one of the nation's leading full-service intellectual property law firms.
Outside the US, we service companies based in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and farther corners of the world. Our culturally aware attorneys speak many languages, including Japanese, French, German, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese.
Oblon's professionals provide industry-leading IP legal services to many of the world's most admired innovators and brands.
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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued final rules implementing the inventor's oath or declaration provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) on August 14, 2012.
April 5 - 10:00am EDT and 8:30pm EDT
May 16, 2023 - 11:00am EDT
On January 4, 2023, Director Vidal picked up right where she left off in 2022 with her use of sua sponte Director review decisions. This time addressing what constitutes a request for adverse judgment during an IPR.
In Apple Inc. v. Zipit Wireless, Inc. (decision available here), Apple filed six petitions for IPR, but the patent owner only filed responses in two of the cases. During a hearing before the Board, Zipit’s counsel was questioned with respect to the other four cases about whether Zipit is “not contesting if a final written decision or adverse judgment was entered with respect to those IPRs.” Zipit’s counsel responded, “[c]orrect, Your Honor. If the Board determines that they have met their burden of proof with respect to those claims Zipit hasn’t filed any opposition.” Adverse judgment was subsequently entered.
In her Director review decision, Director Vidal explained that Zipit’s position was not an unequivocal abandonment of the contest:
Instead Patent Owner’s non-opposition was contingent on the Board determining that Petitioner met its burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the challenged claims are unpatentable. “In an inter partes review . . . , the petitioner shall have the burden of proving a proposition of unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence” and “the petitioner has the burden from the onset to show with particularity why the patent it challenges is unpatentable.” … Accordingly, I vacate the Board’s adverse judgments and remand these proceedings back to the panel to either issue a show cause order clarifying whether Patent Owner is indeed abandoning the contest or to issue a final written decision addressing the patentability of the challenged claims.
Given that it is ultimately the petitioner’s burden to prove unpatentability, this decision make sense, particularly in view of counsel’s express statement.