Addressing the standard for granting a motion to amend claims in
inter partes review (IPR), the US Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit rejected a conclusion by the Patent Trial and
Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) that the patent owner must show that
newly added claim features were not independently known in the
prior art. Veritas Techs. LLC v. Veeam Software Corp.,
Case No. 15-1894 (Fed. Cir., Aug. 30, 2016) (Taranto, J).
The patent at issue relates to computer systems and methods for
performing restores from backups while applications are active and
accessing the data being restored. Veeam challenged the claims of
the patent in an IPR and argued that the claims were invalid as
being obvious in view of a combination of prior art references. The
primary reference disclosed a block-level restoration system that
uses two channels to provide an application on-demand access to
lost data blocks while the lost data blocks are being restored.
