Federal Circuit Vacates and Remands PTAB Decision on Public Accessibility

The Federal Circuit recently vacated and remanded a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), finding that the PTAB applied the wrong legal standard for determining whether a reference was publicly accessible before the critical date of the challenged patent. The Court found that the asserted reference was publicly accessible because a person of ordinary skill in the art could, through the exercise of reasonable diligence, access the reference. The decision, authored by Judge O’Malley, held that a patent challenger does not have to establish that the asserted reference was actually accessed or received or available to a significant portion of those skilled in the art to show that the work was publicly accessible. 

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