On November 18, 2021, the Commissioner for Patents and
acting Director of the USPTO, Andrew Hirshfeld, issued the second order granting a Petition for
Director Review since the interim Director Review process was
implemented by the USPTO. The order was issued in
IPR2018-00733, where petitioner Proppant Express LLC
(“PropX”) challenged U.S. Patent No. 9,440,785 (“the
'785 patent”), owned by Oren Technologies, LLC. The
'785 patent relates to proppant storage containers for
fracking and a method for providing fracking proppant at a well
site via transportation and storage of the containers.
Prior to the order granting the Director Review petition, PropX
challenged a related patent owned by Oren, U.S. Patent No.
9,403,626 (“the '626 patent”). See
Proppant Express Invests, LLC v. Oren Techs, LLC,
IPR2017-01918. In a Final Written Decision issued on
February 14, 2019, the PTAB found that the challenged claims
of the '626 patent were unpatentable as obvious. See
Proppant