Patent Office Clarifies One-Year Deadline for Validity Challenges

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board, the patent office body that decides validity challenges, yesterday designated two of its earlier decisions on deadlines for filing petitions as “informative.”

Both decisions concern the time bar for filing inter partes reviews, which give challengers a relatively quick way to attack patents outside of court. Challengers that have been sued for infringement must file their IPRs within a year of being served with the court complaint. Informative decisions, though not binding, are influential.

In Luv’n Care Ltd v. McGinley, the PTAB refused to take up the IPR because even though the challenger filed ...