In Target Corporation v. Destination Maternity, IPR2014-00508, Paper 20 IPR2014-00509, Paper 19 (September 25, 2014), the Board denied the petitions as barred under 35 USC 315(b),finding that Target could not “join” its later filed petitions with its prior, timely filed petitions.  The Board found that joinder only allows parties to join, and a party cannot join a proceeding to which it is already a party.  The Board separately denied Target motion for joinder in IPR2014-00508, Paper 18, IPR2014-00509, Paper 18.

The Board provided a detailed analysis of Joinder under 35 U.S.C. 315(c), acknowledging prior decisions of the Board that reached a different result, allowing a party to “join itself” in Ariosa Diagnostics v. Isis Innovation Ltd., IPR2012-00022 (September 2, 2014) (Paper 66); Samsung Elecs. Co. v. Virgina Innovation Scis., Inc., IPR2014-00557 (June 13, 2014); Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyconn, Inc., IPR2013-00109 (Feb. 25, 2013) (Paper 15); ABB Inc. v. Roy-G-Biv Corp., IPR2013-00286 (August 9, 2013) (Paper 14); Sony Corp. v. Yissum Research Dev. Co. of the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, IPR2013-00327 (September 24, 2013) (Paper 15).