Introducing: IPR and CBM Instituted Claim Survival Rate by Technology Center

Through December 1, 2015, the PTAB has ruled on the patentability of 9,351 instituted claims through final written decisions in IPR and CBM proceedings, with 7,442 (79.58%) instituted claims being cancelled by the PTAB, 1,571 (16.80%) instituted claims surviving, and 339 (3.62%) instituted claims being conceded by the patent owner.  More detailed cumulative disposition statistics on the Board’s IPR and CBM decisions, updated through December 1, 2015, are available here on the AIA Blog.

It is clear, however, that the Board has not disposed of patent claims equally across the various technology centers to which the Board assigns its cases.  While the overall survival rate of instituted claims across all technology centers through December 1 is 16.80%, a number reflecting both claims cancelled by the Board and claims conceded by patent owners, the survival rates of claims in certain technology centers deviate substantially from the mean.

Instituted claims in technology center 1600, which covers patents in the fields of biotechnology and organic chemistry (including pharmaceuticals), have had the highest instituted claim survival rate at 42.67%.  This is approximately 2.5 times higher than the average survival rate of 16.80% for all technologies.  At the other end of the spectrum, no instituted claim has survived in technology center 2900, which covers design patents.

Of course, some technology centers receive more PTAB petitions than others.  To date, design patents have only been disposed of in 4 IPR final written decisions (1 claim per proceeding), while there have been 46 IPR final written decisions in technology center 1600 involving 689 instituted claims.  The instituted claim survival rates for the top three technology centers by the number of issued final written decisions, 2800 (Electrical), 2600 (Communications), and 2100 (Computer Architecture & Software), each fall within 3% of the average instituted claim survival rate.

Cumulative instituted claim survival rates by technology center will be an ongoing feature of the AIA Blog.  

Various other PTAB metrics collected and generated by Finnegan are reserved for the use of Finnegan and its clients.