The first four decisions on discretionary denial of institution under the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) recently-implemented interim process for Patent Trial and Appeal Board workload management were issued Friday afternoon, May 16. The Office announced in late March that Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart would be taking over requests for discretionary denial of inter partes review (IPR) or post grant review (PGR) proceedings under a new bifurcated process. That announcement came one month after Stewart rescinded former USPTO Director Kathi Vidal’s “Interim Procedure for Discretionary Denials in AIA Post-Grant Proceedings with Parallel District Court Litigation.”

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