Lewis Brisbois Secures Favorable PTAB Decision for Client

(January 25, 2019) - Atlanta Partner Nigamnarayan Acharya and Madison County Associate Rohini Roy recently obtained a favorable decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for our client, Flyte LLC, a company that manufactures levitating gadgets such as light bulbs and clocks.

Levitation Arts, another company that also makes levitation products, had brought a post-grant review against Flyte to invalidate their patent for a levitating lightbulb. In April 2015, Flyte had held a launch party for its product in Sweden, creating a Facebook page for the event. Under the America Invents Act, an inventor has one year to file a patent application after publicly disclosing their invention. If they do not, that disclosure could be used as prior art to invalidate the patent.

While Flyte’s U.S. patent application was filed outside the one-year window, the PTAB agreed that Flyte was entitled to a filing date in November 2015, when a related European patent application was properly filed.

“We are very pleased with the outcome of this decision and it gives us a lot of confidence in the [America Invents Act review] process,” said Mr. Acharya in a Law360 article about the decision (subscription required).

You can read the full decision here. Visit our IP & Technology blog for analysis on the latest developments in intellectual property and patent law.