The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied Google's petition for certiorari in a challenge to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's "settled expectations" doctrine. The Solicitor General had urged denial, agreeing with the Federal Circuit that mandamus review was not available. The doctrine led the PTAB to deny Google's inter partes review of a VirtaMove patent partly because the claims had been in force for 14 years.
In a separate case, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Google LLC v. Valtrus Innovations Ltd., affirming a PTAB final written decision that Google failed to demonstrate the unpatentability of claims directed to merging search engine results. The ruling adds another PTAB loss for Google, though it concerns the merits of the patentability analysis rather than the board's discretion to institute review.
The two rulings are not directly related, but together they show Google facing headwinds in multiple PTAB challenges. In the settled expectations case, Google argued the doctrine operates as an unwritten statute of limitations, while patent owner VirtaMove and the Solicitor General countered that the AIA leaves institution decisions to the Director's unreviewable discretion. The CAFC validity ruling, by contrast, turned on the evidentiary record before the board.