The PTAB has received about 8,000 petitions for America Invents Act (AIA) reviews and issued thousands of decisions instituting reviews, determining patentability and ruling on other issues. However, it has only designated 11 decisions in AIA proceedings precedential, making them binding in future cases. As a result, attorneys practicing before the PTAB feel that there is a lack of guidance about the board's stance on many important and recurring issues. Law360 reached to Finnegan attorney Jason Stach for his insight on how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) could improve its guidance.
Jason said, "Without a robust body of law, litigants will often raise arguments that have failed in the past with new panels in an effort to get a different result. That creates more work for parties and judges and sometimes leads to conflicting outcomes." Jason is also in favor of the suggestion of reducing the number of judges who get a vote so that, for instance, only judges who handle AIA reviews get to decide whether to make those decisions precedential.
