SAS Institute: One Month In

We are now a little over a month since the Supreme Court issued its decision in SAS Institute v. Iancu, where the Court held that "[w]hen the Patent Office institutes an inter partes review, it must decide the patentability of all of the claims the petitioner has challenged." As previously reported, the PTAB issued Guidance on the impact of SAS on AIA trial proceedings and immediately started implementing its interpretation of SAS Institute, including the issuance of "order[s] supplementing [an] institution decision" for partially instituted proceedings to include all challenged claims and all challenged grounds. As of the time of this post, the authors were able to identify over 300 of these types of orders – the last of which issued on May 24. At this point, it is expected the vast majority of orders modifying the scope of trial have been issued by the PTAB.