Now i am approaching the Reexamination Procedure of US patent law, so maybe would give you a detailed explanation as well as I myself.
The Rexamination of U.S patent system was established much newer than Reissue in 1980, for the purpose of providing a lower-cost alterative to federal court litigation in which to resolve certain questions of validity. Because in the previous cases , a large portion of the US patents adjudicated invalid by federal courts were invalidated based on newly discovered prior art that had never been considered by the USPTO. Reexamination was expected to creating a relatively low-cost method of obtaining a USPTO examination on this newly discovered prior art. ( known as ex Parte Reexamination).
However the system is much biased in favor of patent owners because of the extremely limited opportunities for third-party participation. And in 1999 a inter partes form of reexamination was ennacted.The proceeding of this type, offers greater participation for third parties, while suffers from its own limitations in terms of a severe estoppel provision and significant limitations on third-appeal rights.
above all,comparintg with the ex parte system, inter partes reexamination permit greater participation by third-party requesters. That is to say, the third party requester in inter partes reexamination is permitted to file a response th each statement filed by the patentee troughout the entire reexamination process(in the ex parte, the third party only have one opportunity to file a response ,when receiving the copy of the patentee\'s statement at the very beginning), which is closest parallel to the invalidation procedure of the Chinese patent law. |
