Sept. 16 marked the two-year anniversary of the implementation of the America Invents Act (AIA), which introduced multiple new tools for challenging the validity of issued patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Specifically, the AIA ushered in three new procedures known as inter partes review (IPR), postgrant review (PGR) and covered business method (CBM) review. These three procedures allow a petitioner to challenge the validity of one or more patent claims after they have been granted by the PTO.
The popularity of the IPR procedure in particular has grown rapidly since its inception. (An IPR can be filed to challenge any patent issued on, before or after Sept. 16, 2012, unlike a PGR, which cannot be filed unless the challenge is against a patent that issued under the new first-to-file rules that went into effect on March 16, 2013, or a CBM, which can only be filed by a challenger after being accused of infringement.) For example, fewer than 40 petitions for IPR were filed per month during the first six months that IPR was available. That number has more than tripled to an average of well more than 120 petitions per month through the second quarter of 2014.
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