Trending At The PTAB: Multiple Petitions In IPRs

A petitioner may file multiple inter partes review petitions challenging the same patent under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.

Multiple petitions are generally categorized into two types: serial and parallel.

However, the PTAB has discretion to deny such petitions. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board Consolidated Trial Practice Guide, or CTPG, published in November 2019 states that “one petition should be sufficient to challenge the claims of a patent in most situations.”¹ The CTPG recognizes that

there may be circumstances in which more than one petition may be necessary, including, for example, when the patent owner has asserted a large number of claims in litigation or when there is a dispute about priority date requiring arguments under multiple prior art references ... although this should be rare.²