Fed. Circ. Says PTAB Wrongly Axed PPC Patents in AIA Review

On February 22, 2016 the Federal Circuit ruled that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) erroneously invalidated claims of three of Finnegan client PPC Broadband's coaxial cable technology patents. Corning Optical Communications challenged the claims at the PTAB in 2014 and in an inter partes review proceeding, the Board found that all 78 of PPC Broadband’s patents were obvious. However, the Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB's findings on 49 of the challenged claims, finding that either the board's claim construction was wrong or the prior art did not support its finding.

Finnegan attorney J. Michael Jakes represented PPC Broadband and said that he was "pleased that the Federal Circuit recognized the errors in the PTAB's rulings." He added, "This case is a significant victory for PPC—and for patent owners—because it makes clear that infringers like Corning can no longer assume that the broadest reasonable interpretation standard will excuse their misconduct after-the-fact. Moreover, this case re-emphasizes how the different claim construction standards between the patent office and district courts can cause disparate results. The Supreme Court will be addressing this issue in Cuozzo."