Judge Randall Rader, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, once warned that the judges sitting on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board were acting as “death squads, killing property rights.” Now, a new study by the law firm Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto shows that this has not been the case.
Rader’s comments, made in 2013, fueled criticism and fear that the PTAB, which was created by Congress in the American Invents Act of 2011, would invalidate an overwhelming percentage of patents under review. The judge later explained that he was “troubled” by the differences between proceedings at the PTAB and in the district courts, and these would lead to different outcomes.
