One of the more attractive features of these post-grant challenges under the AIA is that all of these challenges have to be completed within a statutory timeframe. This is extremely important to not only the stakeholders in the contest, which include the patent owner and the petitioner, but extremely important to district court judges. District court judges want to know that these post-grant proceedings will get done in a timely fashion. And one way that that has been accomplished with the statues for post-grant reviews inter partes reviews and covered business method reviews is the use of essentially a one-year timer from the time that a decision is made to institute trial to completion of the proceeding.

The overall process itself probably runs closer to about a year and a half because the patent office will have roughly a half year to make a decision of whether to institute trial or not. But this certainty that has been given to us by statue of the timing of these reviews is what district court judges will really like in the future because it will help them control their cases. For example, they may decide to stay their cases in order to get the validity or, more accurately, the patentability determination by the patent office before charging off and marching into a full-fledge patent infringement suit.