Andrew Holtman, Brandon Rash Interviewed by CCBJ on Patent Law and Litigation

Akin Gump intellectual property partners Andrew Holtman and Brandon Rash were both interviewed by Corporate Counsel Business Journal, the resulting article titled “As Technology Accelerates, Patent Law Keeps Apace.”

Among the topics covered are patent litigation, emerging technologies, IP transactions and IP portfolios. Here are a few highlights:

• New areas in patent litigation: “We continue to see robust innovation in the small molecule and biologic space, and therefore we continue to see patent portfolio challenges in the district courts and the PTAB…Further, medical devices continue to amaze us – and they also provide fertile ground for disputes. We expect to see this industry merge with other hot areas of intellectual property, such as the high-tech sector and even artificial intelligence.”
• Developments at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB): “While the PTAB is still a popular forum for defendants in patent litigation, IPR [inter partes review] petitioners are finding less success today than they did in the past. Institution rates have fallen from the 75 to 85 percent range when IPRs started in late 2012 to around 60 to 65 percent more recently.”
• The importance of due diligence in IP transactions: “Fundamentally, however, the heart of due diligence belongs to validity and freedom-to-operate assessments. Will the client have a defendable property right for what it perceives as a valuable asset in the transaction – for instance, a product? Will the client subject itself to future litigation or costs resulting from third-party intellectual property rights?”
• IP portfolio management: “Patent portfolio management is critical for innovative companies. In-house patent counsel have access to statistics that tell them how many resources similarly situated companies are putting toward developing patent portfolios and what size they should be. But companies then need a strategy for deploying those resources to best achieve the company’s business goals.”

To read the full article, click here.