Inter Partes Review and Post Grant Review Practice Group

Our Inter Partes Review (IPR) and Post Grant Review (PGR) Practice Group works hand-in-hand with our patent litigation bench to provide excellent results for our clients whether challenging the validity of a patent or facing a challenge to a patent’s validity before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

IPR and PGR proceedings are streamlined proceedings before the USPTO that are brought for the purpose of invalidating patent claims in a manner similar to conventional litigation. However, both IPR and PGR proceedings provide a quicker and more cost-effective alternative to conventional litigation, because both proceedings typically conclude within a one to one-and-a-half-year period—faster than traditional venues for challenging patents, such as District Court litigation. Using the USPTO as a forum for validity challenges means that the invalidity arguments are considered by an expert panel of experienced technical judges, rather than a jury.  Bringing an IPR or PGR can also, under the right circumstances, allow a party to ask for a stay of an infringement action against them until the PTAB decides the validity issue. They can also be used to advance difficult license negotiations.

Our attorneys have the special expertise to handle these proceedings. All our attorneys in the IPR and PGR Practice Group have technical backgrounds – from electrical engineering to computer science to physics to biomedical engineering. We also have experience in appearing before the USPTO and have the litigation skills necessary to achieve successful results at the preliminary phase of IPRs and PGRs and at the eventual hearing.

Wiggin and Dana’s lawyers have decades of experience addressing patent-related obstacles quickly and cost-effectively from both sides – patent holder and potential infringer. Wiggin and Dana’s IPR and PGR Practice Group creates innovate, cost-effective, and tailored legal strategies to enable innovative companies to avoid patent pitfalls. 

Among the patent post grant proceedings practice’s areas of expertise are:

• Inter Partes Review,
• Post-Grant Review,
• Covered Business Method Patent Review (CBM),
• Interferences/Derivation, and
• Supplemental Examination.

Wiggin and Dana patent attorneys have helped clients initiate proceedings to challenge patents in a wide range of technologies, from software systems to medical devices. We have a strong track record of defeating problematic patents.  We have also been successful in defending our clients’ challenged patents.