Curious how PTAB's going?
PTAB is the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which was created in the America Invents Act (AIA) patent reform bill in 2012. The idea was to find a quicker way to find and invalidate patents that should not have been issued.
Of course, PTAB has turned into many things, including a means for hedge fund short sellers to make a quick profit by shorting a stock and then challenging patents held by that company. I'm guessing creating a new way to manipulate the stock market for profit isn't quite what the patent reformers had in mind.
But apparently it's worse than that. Here's Gene Quinn's view from his IP Watchdog blog:
The Redline case, like so many others, shows just how much of a wild west inter partes review is at the Patent Office. PTAB judges do not implement the rules and laws uniformly, and joke is being made out of due process. Why? Because these proceedings need to be completed within 12 months, so the PTAB cuts corners and simply doesn’t believe they can offer the process that patent owners, and increasingly petitioners, deserve. This is making post grant proceedings seem more like a kangaroo court or some hang ’em high court right out of a Clint Eastwood western.
Lovely.