In September, the Patent Office revised Standing Operating
Procedure 2 (available here) to create a new
review path for designating opinions precedential or
informational.
See PTAB Litigation Blog discussion of SOP 2
here. Under the new rule, the review is performed by the
Precedential Opinion Panel ("POP"), a three person panel
consisting of the USPTO Director, the Commissioner for Patents and
the PTAB Chief Judge, or their designees. The POP will take
up its first case in Proppant Express Investments, LLC. v. Oren
Technologies, LLC, Case IPR 2018-00914.
As
discussed here, in Proppant Express, the underlying
panel held that 35 U.S.C. § 315(c) did not authorize
same-party joinder, that is, joinder of an IPR raising new issues
to a previously-instituted IPR brought by the same party. As
a result, it found petitioner PropX's second IPR to be
litigation time-barred and denied institution. In reaching
its decision, the panel pointed to the plain language of
