BIO 2015: IPR not a ‘death squad’, says former PTAB judge
Scott Kamholz (pictured below), a former judge at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, recently returned to law firm Foley Hoag as partner. LSIPR spoke to him at this year’s BIO International Convention, where he explained why the inter-partes review is not a “death squad” for patents.
LSIPR: As a former judge at the PTAB, what is your view of the board’s utility as a forum for challenging life sciences patents?
SK: Pharma is not is not a major area for inter partes review (IPR). The last numbers I saw put [the percentage of instituted cases] at less than 10%. It’s hard to say whether that’s because it’s under-utilised in pharma, or that it’s just more heavily utilised in other areas. If you think of the Apples and Samsungs who are going at each other constantly trying to destroy each other’s patents and they’re racking up a lot of cases.
