The Federal Circuit's decision is below.
It found that even though the defendant did not receive an identification of asserted claims from the plaintiff until after the statutory IPR deadline, and even though the patents included a total of 830 claims, the statute did not allow the defendant to file a new IPR petition and then join it to its previous IPR proceeding as a way to add claims after the statutory filing deadline.
The Court recognized that the decision would result in wasted efforts by defendants in challenging claims unnecessarily:
We . . . recognize that our analysis here may lead defendants, in some circumstances, to expend effort and expense in challenging claims that may ultimately never be asserted against them.
The Court nonetheless set forth a rule against self-joining based on the "clear and unambiguous" language of the statute.
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