Overview
The three-judge panels at the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) are something that we've never seen before in this country. The feeling that parties are getting a fair and careful read from an experienced panel of judges gives our clients comfort with trusting their cases to the PTAB.
For the first time, the United States has a set of trial judges who are doing nothing but patent work. When you marry together deep Patent Office experience with broad-ranging private practice patent litigation experience to create a three-judge PTAB panel, it's a quantum shift in the level of understanding and critical judgment that is applied to any defense or argument.
At Ropes & Gray, our attorneys take a careful, customized and strategic approach with each client. We talk about what is special and different about each case, especially if it is going to catch the eye of the PTAB judges. It's powerful to ask your client: what's wrong with the other guys’ patent and what's wrong with their case. It's really not possible to succeed in these proceedings unless you are prepared on every possible issue. Our firm has anticipated and experienced the intensity of the scrutiny to which a client’s arguments can be subjected at any moment during these proceedings. And we have understood that this level of rigor requires an extreme level of preparation.