GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY v. UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORP.
- Jul 10 2019 |
- Category: CAFC Updates
General Electric petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for inter partes review of U.S. Patent No. 8,511,605 which is assigned to United Technologies. The Board found the claims not obvious in view of the prior art. GE appeals. However, not every party to an IPR will have Article III standing to appeal a final written decision of the Board, and that to establish standing, an appellant must have suffered an injury in fact that has a nexus to the challenged conduct and that can be ameliorated by the court. The injury in fact must be concrete and particularized, not merely conjectural or hypothetical. The CAFC holds that GE lacks Article III standing because GE’s purported competitive injuries are too speculative to support constitutional standing. Accordingly, the CAFC dismisses the appeal. Judge Hughes concurs, observing that while recent CAFC precedent compels holding that GE lacks Article III standing here, he believes that court has developed an overly rigid and narrow standard for Article III standing in the context of appeals from inter partes review proceedings.