More than a year after its last precedential designation, the
Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) of the Patent Trial and Appeal
Board has held that Fedwire confirmation of payment constitutes
sufficient evidence that the required fee for a petition
for inter partes review has been paid. The POP
in this IPR proceeding consisted of the acting Director of the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (who is also the Commissioner
of Patents), the Chief Administrative Patent Judge, and the Deputy
Chief Administrative Patent Judge.
On December 16, 2020, one day shy of the one-year statutory bar,
the petitioner filed a petition for IPR and initiated a wire
payment of the required filing fee to Treasury NYC, the
USPTO's designated bank, using the Federal Reserve Fedwire
System. Although the petitioner received immediate confirmation
from its bank that the wire transfer was completed, the USPTO
informed the petitioner that it had not received the filing fee on
either that day