PTAB Allows Three Concurrent IPR Petitions For Unusual Patent Claims

Recently, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("the Board") was persuaded to consider the merits of three out of seven concurrent petitions for an inter partes review of a single patent due to the patent's complicated claiming structure involving multiple dependencies. Apple Inc. v. Smith Interface Techs., LLC, IPR2024-01086, Paper 10 (Feb. 13, 2025).

In June 2024, Apple Inc. ("Petitioner") filed seven concurrent petitions requesting an inter partes review of U.S. Patent No. 10,656,754 ("the '754 patent"), which describes a method in which a signal is received in association with a device's touch interface, thereby altering the user experience for users of the device. Petitioner submitted a Ranking Notice for its petitions, each of which challenged independent claim 2 of the '754 patent, among others, on the single ground that the challenged claims would have been obvious over a combination of two references, either alone or with minimal additional references.