Multiple IPR Petitions For Same Claim Are Often Not Repetitive

Post-grant review proceedings, including inter partes review, have become an important tool in managing intellectual property claims and risk. Refinements have been made since these proceedings first became available in 2012, including an updated U.S. Patent and Trademark Office trial practice guide in August 2018, the rule changes that implement the Phillips claim construction standard for IPRs, and the current practice of the PTAB consolidating petitions with common issues for efficiency purposes.^{1 2} However, relying on certain statistical examinations of IPR filings, some have expressed concerns that IPRs are unfair to patent owners and that the ability to file multiple petitions that address the same claim or set of claims of a patent permits "serial attacks" to "kill a valid patent" which is an "abuse" of the system.^{3 4}