POP Addresses IPR Printed Publication Standard

The Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) of the Patent Trials and Appeals Board (PTAB) recently answered the question, "What is required for a petitioner to establish that an asserted reference qualifies as a 'printed publication' at the institution stage?" According to the POP, "[f]or institution of an inter partes review, a petitioner must establish a reasonable likelihood that a reference is a printed publication." Hulu, LLC. v. Sound View Innovations, LLC (IPR2018-01039), Paper 29 dated December 20, 2019, at 2.

In Hulu, LLC. v. Sound View Innovations, LLC, petitioner Hulu alleged that claims of patent owner Sound View's U.S. Patent No. 5,806,062 (the '062 patent) are invalid as obvious over Dougherty, a textbook that, according to Hulu, was publicly available prior to the 1995 filing of the application that resulted in the '062 patent. Hulu's obviousness argument relied upon a copy of Dougherty bearing a copyright date of 1990, a printing date of November 1992 and