SAS Institute, Inc. v. Iancu

SAS Institute (SAS) (plaintiff) petitioned for inter partes review of a ComplementSoft software patent, challenging all of the patent's claims as unpatentable. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the board) (defendant) instituted review on only some of the challenged claims, relying on a Patent Office regulation it said let it review claims one by one rather than all at once. SAS challenged that partial approach in the Federal Circuit, arguing the governing statute required the board to decide every challenged claim once review was instituted, but the Federal Circuit rejected that argument.