Joint Comment Letter to USPTO on Changes Under Consideration to Discretionary Institution Practices Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Director Katherine K. Vidal
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property
Director of United States Patent and Trademark Office

Dear Director Vidal:

The Quality Patents Coalition respectfully submits these comments in response to the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (the "USPTO" or "Office") Request for Comments on the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published on April 21, 2023 and titled Changes Under Consideration to Discretionary Institution Practices, Petition Word-Count Limits, and Settlement Practices for America Invents Act Trial Proceedings Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, 88 Fed. Reg. 24,503 (the "ANPR").

QUALITY PATENTS COALITION

The Quality Patents Coalition (QPC) is comprised of companies and trade associations representing the financial services, fintech, retail and restaurant industries. QPC is dedicated to ensuring the patent system fosters innovation through issuance of quality patents, provides fair and efficient post-grant and inter partes review procedures as set forth in the America Invents Act, and adheres to the letter of the law and judicial precedent.

We have a strong interest in the proper implementation of America Invents Act ("AIA") post-grant proceedings, such as inter partes review. Today, our members and many other companies are heavily investing in developing technologies that touch all aspects of society, including healthcare, climate change, data security and privacy, and access to education, to name a few. We have increasingly sought to protect such innovation through the patent system. Thus, we have a strong interest in ensuring that AIA post-grant proceedings are fair to patent owners.

At the same time, our industries and many others have been plagued for years by patent litigation based on patents that claim longstanding and well-known concepts or are otherwise of low quality and that should not have issued. The issuance of such patents leads directly to costly and wasteful litigation that is detrimental to economic progress and actual innovation. We therefore have an equally strong interest in ensuring that AIA post-grant proceedings, which were designed to provide a lower-cost alternative to district court litigation for determining patent validity, are effective at accomplishing that goal.

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