Media Coverage
Source: Law360
Media Coverage
04.17.13
The first-ever hearing in an America Invents Act post-grant proceeding “seemed more like appeals at the patent office as opposed to something more akin to a trial in district court,” observed Patrick Doody, an IP partner in Pillsbury’s Northern Virginia office.
During the two-hour hearing, the judges on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board questioned counsel for SAP America and Versata Software about SAP’s claim that a Versata patent for a way of organizing pricing data is an unpatentable abstract idea.
Doody said that many attorneys, including himself, were closely watching this first hearing as an indication of how new proceedings will operate. He commented that the proceeding, which is formally known as a trial, did not feature witnesses or other attributes of a trial, making the PTO procedures more like an appeal of a rejection of a patent application.
Doody noted that because the dispute between Versata and SAP is focused on the single question of whether the patent covered an abstract idea, it is possible that future proceedings involving multiple grounds for rejection could more closely resemble a trial. “I don't know if this one is indicative of how it will go in the future. This case involves a purely legal question that lends itself more to argument by lawyers.”