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<i>Cuozzo</i> Upholds PTAB Authority

By Jennifer R. Bush and Will Pierog
August 01, 2016

In June, in Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, No. 15-446 (June 20, 2016), the Supreme Court upheld the prior Federal Circuit decision that a patent owner cannot, in most circumstances, appeal the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to institute an inter partes review (IPR). The Supreme Court further found that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reasonably exercised its rulemaking authority in applying a “broadest reasonable construction” (BRC) standard to IPR claim constructions. Federal courts apply a narrower standard set forth in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005), construing claims to have the ordinary and customary meaning as understood by one of skill in the art at the time of the invention.

Background of Cuozzo

Cuozzo Speed Technologies (Cuozzo) sued several automakers and GPS device companies for infringement of its patent covering a speedometer that can display the local speed limit. Defendant Garmin, a GPS producer, filed an IPR petition asserting that claim 17 of the patent was invalid as obvious over prior art cited in the petition. The PTAB instituted review not only as to claim 17, but also as to claims 10 and 14. The PTAB evaluated the broadest reasonable construction of the claim term “integrally attached” in claim 10, and upon which claims 14 and 17 depended, and found all three claims obvious over the cited prior art.

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