The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) denied a request from Cultec Inc. to review Finnegan client StormTech LLC's patent for plastic stormwater chambers. This comes after the PTAB denied another Cultec petition to review a related StormTech patent in July. The board said the company's arguments were similar to those already considered by a patent examiner.
The PTAB declined to review the first patent because Cultech filed the necessary paperwork the night of the deadline but did not pay the $25,600 fee until the next day. While the second patent was filed on time, it involved arguments that StormTech's chamber would have been obvious based on several earlier inventions. Each of its arguments depended on one particular patent that predated StormTech's. The board concluded there were additional inventions that Cultech relied on in its petition that were also the same, or substantially the same, as ones considered by the examiner.
Read "Agency Has Heard It Before, Won't Review StormTech Patent"
