From the very outset of inter partes review proceedings, the Board has helped to manage its docket by rejecting challenge grounds in petitions that are redundant to other grounds in the petition. See Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Progressive Casualty Ins. Co., CBM2012-00003 (explaining vertical and horizontal redundancy). As a strategy to avoid this type of redundancy finding, Petitioners began to file multiple petitions directed to the same patent, hoping that by paying an extra $23,000+ filing fee, the Board would consider additional grounds against the same patent. That strategy is facing headwinds, however, as demonstrated in the case of LG Elec., Inc. v. ATI Techs., ULC, IPR2015-00327, Paper 15 (Sept. 2, 2015) (denying request for rehearing). In that case, the Board (once again) denied a petition relying in part on 35 U.S.C. § 325(d), finding that the overlapping of arguments between two related petitions, and the institution of an IPR of the same claims in the related case, warranted a denial of the petition.

Of the reasons given by the Board for its decision, the one factor that might have tipped the Board’s decision in Petitioner’s favor relates to the purported overlap between the primary references cited in each of the two petitions at issue. If Petitioner had provided some rationale regarding why the primary references do not disclose substantially the same subject matter, the decision might have come out differently. And, of course, if the references really did disclose the same subject matter, a second petition was likely not necessary in the first place.

Regardless, a denial of a decision to institute is non-appealable, so this type of decision by the Board is, effectively, immune from challenge. 35 U.S.C. § 314(d).