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AOL, Inc. and Cloudera, Inc. v. Coho Licensing LLC

Paper 12, March 24, 2015

IPR2014-00771 (Patent 8,024,395 B1)

[Petitioner may not request an expanded panel.

 In a request for rehearing, petitioner may not to present new evidence or expand on deficient arguments in the original petition.]

FACTS

AOL Inc. and Cloudera, Inc. (Petitioner) filed a request for rehearing asserting that a dissent from the denial of institution strongly favored a rehearing by an expanded panel and that the Board misapprehended the premise of one of the prior art reference cited in the petition.

HOLDING

The Board denied Petitioner’s Request for Rehearing by an expanded panel. The Board noted that The Board’s Standard Operating Procedures provide that the Chief Judge may act to expand a panel on a “suggestion” from a judge or panel, but nothing authorizes a petitioner to request such an expansion. Further, decision to expand a panel requires consideration of whether the issue is one of conflict with a decision of a reviewing court or a precedential decision of the Board. A dissent in the denial of institution based on the insufficiency of the evidence presented in the Petition is not in itself a reason to expand the panel.

The Board concluded that Petitioner’s argument that the Board misapprehended the premise of one of the prior art reference is unpersuasive. The Board noted that Petitioner in its request for rehearing raised entirely new arguments and for the first time expanded on various disclosures of the prior art reference in question. Since these arguments had not been previously presented to the Board, it could not have misapprehended them. The Board emphasized that a request for rehearing is not an opportunity to expand on arguments or fill gaps in evidence presented in the Petition.

TAKEAWAY

The Chief Judge may expand a panel on rehearing on the suggestion from panel, but a petitioner may not request an expanded panel.

Request for rehearing is not an opportunity to present new evidence or expand on deficient arguments in the petition.

 

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