The Year The AIA's Post-Grant Processes Took Hold

The year of 2012 brought substantial changes to the patent system through the introduction of the PTAB and the new proceedings, IPR and CBM.

Law360, New York (December 21, 2012, 1:23 PM ET) -- The year 2012 should be remembered as the year the America Invents Act really took hold at the patent office. The AIA, enacted on Sept. 16, 2011, provided a panoply of new procedures for challenging patents. On the one-year anniversary of the AIA’s enactment, Sept. 16, 2012, the patent bar was finally able to take advantage of two of these procedures.

One new procedure is inter partes review (“IPR”), which replaced the inter partes re-examination procedure. The second is “transitional post-grant review of covered business method patents” (“CBM”). Any patent may be challenged using IPR, but CBM proceedings are limited to only those patents directed at the processing and operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service. This article provides a brief review of these two procedures, and then gives a look at how patent challengers have begun to use them.