Kingston filed its brief this week in the Polaris v. Kingston case pending at the Federal Circuit. The brief had some sort of informality and has not been accepted yet by the court; but, I thought it was worth posting anyway. You can review the brief here:
As I mentioned before, it will be interesting to follow this case. Kingston’s brief not surprisingly agrees with the DOJ’s brief that PTAB judges are inferior officers under the control of the Director. Therefore, the argument goes that they do not need to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, in contrast to Polaris’ position.
I thought it was interesting that the brief mentions that the Director currently sits on some IPR panels:
Indeed, the Director currently sits on a number of active IPR panels. See, e.g., Valve Corp. v. Elec. Scripting Prods., Inc., IPR2019-00062, -00063, -00064, -00065, -00074, -00084; HTC Corp. et al v. Elec. Scripting Prods., Inc., IPR2018-01031; -01032; Lite-On Tech. Corp. v. Darfon Elecs. Corp., IPR2018-01062.