The American Bankers Association and other trade associations, collectively the Quality Patent Coalition, responded this week to two U.S. Patent and Trademark Office notices of proposed rulemakings regarding general Patent Trial and Appeals Board, or PTAB, practices and rules governing director review of PTAB decisions.
The PTAB proposed rulemaking largely codifies many existing PTAB review policies and practices and are narrower in scope than originally proposed, reflecting the concerns raised by the associations. In the letter, the coalition said it supports the proposed rules in the notice, points out key conflicts between the proposed rules in the rulemaking and “precedential” PTAB decisions, supports the notice’s separate briefing and page limits for discretionary denial issues and the tightening of the 325(d) bar, and addresses the problematic proposals in the initial proposal that did not make it into the proposed rulemakings.
In addition, the agency’s director review rulemaking requires a party to choose either director review or panel rehearing and notes the elimination of the Precedential Opinion Panel review, consistent with the coalition’s priorities. The associations’ comment letter generally supports the proposed rule and discusses a few issues not addressed by the rulemaking, such as the standard of review and whether director review decisions will be precedential by default.
