Steady Stream of AIA Post-Issuance Review Petitions Filed in PTAB

It has been a little over one month since post grant patent reviews were authorized by the AIA and the Patent Office Patent Review Processing System (PRPS) shows about 47 petitions on file in the PTAB.

Look at it this way to put things in perspective:

• The 47 petitions filed over this past month are just shy in number of the total number of inter partes reexamination requests filed  in the first four years of the inter partes reexamination statute (only 53 total inter partes reexamination requests were filed in the years of 2000 to 2004 according to PTO statistics).
• If this rate of filing continues for the next 11 months, we could see about 500 petitions in the first year period, which is more than the 374 inter partes reexamination requests filed in 2011.
• Assuming we only see about 250 such petitions this year, that would roughly equate to the number of filings of inter partes reexamination requests filed in 2009 (258).

So regardless of how many filings are made over the year, AIA post-grant proceedings are off to a very fast start compared to the adoption of inter partes reexamination.  This is interesting because there is obvious popularity despite enhanced filing fees, costs of preparation, and estoppel.

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