{"id":1547,"date":"2014-09-29T14:48:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T18:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2014-10-05T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:03:08","slug":"board-uses-its-discretion-to-duck-joinder-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1547","title":{"rendered":"Board Uses its Discretion to Duck Joinder Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Microsoft Corporation v. Enfish, LLC<\/em>, IPR2014-00574, Paper 13, IPR2014-00576, Paper 13, IPR2014-00577, Paper 13 \u00a0(September 29, 2014), the Board denied Microsoft&#8217;s request to join the petition, with one of the prior <em>inter partes<\/em> reviews Microsoft filed against the same patent.\u00a0 The joinder was essential for the petition to be timely.<\/p>\n<p>Among other things, Enfish argued that joinder was not available because joinder only allows the addition of parties, and Microsoft was already a party.\u00a0 The Board ducked the question by quoting the statute and concluding that &#8220;[T]he standard for joinder gives the Director discretion as to whether to join an <em>inter partes<\/em> review with another <em>inter partes<\/em> review. 35 U.S.C. \u00a7 315(c)&#8221; without expressly dealing with Enfish&#8217;s point that the statute explicitly says that parties can be joined, not petitions.\u00a0 Other panels of the Board have agreed with Enfish.<\/p>\n<p>The Board went on to conclude that Microsoft had not sufficiently shown that joinder was justified, and in its discretion, denied the motion for joinder.<\/p>\n<p>Discretion may be the better part of valor, but here\u00a0it simply\u00a0allows the confusion over joinder to continue.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Microsoft Corporation v. Enfish, LLC, IPR2014-00574, Paper 13, IPR2014-00576, Paper 13, IPR2014-00577, Paper 13 \u00a0(September 29, 2014), the Board denied Microsoft&#8217;s request to join the petition, with one of the prior inter partes reviews Microsoft filed against the same &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1547\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ZIpB-oX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}