In nearly every patent litigation, section 103 obviousness contentions will be served. How do you do this in your cases and what are your options? In later posts we'll discuss the specific approaches, including "combination buckets," section 103 invalidity charts, serpentine lists of combinations, but here we'll discuss how PatDek can give you an advantage in setting forth section 103 combinations. Because the PatDek platform is collaborative, a single form-based interface is presented to each reviewer. The prior art review team can consist of many lawyers, at different law firms, and at different locations. With a single interface, all analysis information for each reviewer forms a single data set. Resulting invalidity charts can then be generated in a uniform fashion. More importantly, the analysis of one reviewer can considered in combination with the analysis of all other reviewers.
This approach provides many benefits. For example, three references analyzed by three different reviewers can combined as a 103 combination. This specific combination may ordinarily be overlooked under the traditional approach to prior art review. A second benefit is that a chart can be generated with information from different references with only a few mouse clicks. The traditional approach requires cutting-and-pasting information from one chart to another.
Finally, all relevant combinations can be identified, considered, and most importantly, provided to the plaintiff as part of your invalidity contentions. More and more Courts now require a specific listing of each prior art combination that will be relied upon in litigation. Under the traditional approach, there are very limited ways of providing this specificity, and in a lot of instances, some of the proposed combinations may not be accurate or supportable.
