On December 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case Thryv, Inc. v. Click-To-Call Technologies, LP. The case will determine whether people may challenge certain Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions in court. A decision that restricts judicial review would make it harder for those who lose patent fights at the U.S. Patent and Trade Office to challenge those results in federal court.
The case arose when the PTAB allowed an inter partes review (IPR) of a patent. IPR is a procedure that allows a third party to both challenge a patent claim and request a review of the challenge before the PTAB as long as the challenge is filed within a statutory time limit.
Click-To-Call Technologies, LP (CTC) challenged the IPR, arguing that the time limit had expired. The PTAB rejected CTC’s challenge. Appeals courts wrestled with whether courts had jurisdiction to review the PTAB’s interpretation of the time limit. Now the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether a statute restricting judicial review applies to the PTAB’s conclusion that the time limit to request IPR did not apply in this case.
To learn more about judicial review, see here:
https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_review
Additional reading:
https://ballotpedia.org/Journey:_Judicial_review
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit
https://ballotpedia.org/Administrative_Procedure_Act
https://ballotpedia.org/Patent_examiner
https://ballotpedia.org/Supreme_Court_cases,_October_term_2019-2020
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