PTAB Denies Patent Owner’s Last-Minute Discovery Request, PTAB Litigation Blog
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In Unified Patents, LLC f/k/a Unified Patents Inc. v. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (IPR2021-00827), the PTAB denied a patent owner’s request to file a motion for additional discovery into any real parties-in-interest. Here, the Patent Owner requested a telephone conference with regard to seeking discovery on the issue of real parties-in-interest. With regard to timing, the Patent Owner’s preliminary response, in which the Patent Owner would (and did) make the assertion that Petitioner failed to identify all real parties-in-interest, was due the following day. The Board said that there “could have been no reasonable expectation that a telephone conference call would be arranged, a motion for additional discovery be authorized and filed, an opposition to the motion be filed, a reply to the opposition be filed, and a decision be made on that motion all within a single business day, much less obtaining the information requested and making use of that information within the same business day.”
