Validity Challenges: District Court Vs. Patent Office
Law360, New York (December 18, 2013, 8:31 PM EST) -- In 2013, inter partes review and covered business method review — two new procedures created by the America Invents Act — fully joined ex parte re-examination as options for challenging validity in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Each offers a profoundly different forum for adjudicating validity compared to U.S. district court. At the same time, many PTO-based challenges proceed in parallel with a related district court litigation, creating the possibility of inconsistent results — a possibility that was realized in two important 2013 decisions: Fresenius USA Inc. v. Baxter International Inc., __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2013) and Apotex Inc. v. Alcon Pharmaceuticals Ltd., IPR2013-00012 (PTAB Mar. 19, 2013). Both decisions illustrate the complexities that the availability of different tribunals has created, and the challenges that litigants face when executing an enforcement or defensive strategy....
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