English
Should a Protective Order Bar Participation in Patent Reexamination?
Courts Struggle with Realities of Post Grant Practice
A standard component of any patent litigation is a protective order. Such orders will invariably include a “prosecution bar. ” The prosecution bar operates to ensure that individuals accessing such confidential data are not permitted to prosecute patent applications in the area of the litigated technology (usually for a fixed duration of time). Absent this bar, patent applications/claims could be fashioned by competitive decision makers involved in the litigation based on the confidential information of their rival.
With concurrent patent reexamination now commonplace with most patent litigation, the question becomes:
Should a prosecution bar extend to patent reexamination?
The answer to that question has varied across district courts, and even across judges of the same court. Those courts permitting participation in patent reexamination would benefit from a reading of the record in University of Virginia Patent Foundation v. General Electric Company. Read the rest of this entry »
