Bah!
Patently obvious what would end up happening, really.
A patent-holding company is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) claiming an administrator's decision to extend filing deadlines has led to its patents being challenged in court. Elm 3DS Innovations says that the USPTO was acting outside its authority last year when, following a three-day blackout at its Washington …
…that only a lawyer could make. Actually, the companies challenging Elm are not quite operating in good faith either, if they are deliberately filing on the last day of the 1-year deadline in order to draw the case out as long as possible to annoy Elm. Which is, I guess, legal in a narrow sense, although I seem to recall instances where doing so has drawn a censure from the judge. So it's understandable (in an extremely limited, absolutionist context) why a lawyer would be trying to run this technicality into the ground.
I don't know much about all of this, but it sounds like the little guy has to be sneaky to try and dodge legal fights. I'm thinking no matter what day you file on, the big thugs of the arena always start a fight, so it seems smart to be sneaky, or stupid that you can be sneaky (the big thugs are sneaky too).
A boss I once had insisted that he was not asked to make decisions until the last possible moment. He reasonably reasoned that circumstances could be different later and he didn't want to have to change the decision 1/2/3 days/weeks/months later.
I imagine that there could be some legal maxim that filing before the deadline is dangerous?
The patent troll filed a suit against three chip makers, the chip makers filed a Patent Review Request (on the last available day, sure). If the power had not gone out, the IPR would have been received in time. With the power out, it would not have been. So the PTO extends deadlines for filings to make up for the outage.
If they did not grant the extension, would the chip makers be suing the PTO for stuffing up their end of the patent suit via power outage?
Not quite
Elm filed a patent, no challenge was received up until the 363 days had passed
Days 364 and 365 were lost due to an issue which isn't covered by the law which allows for extension to deadlines.
Director of the PTO decided unilaterally to invoke those lost days due to the issue as a public holiday, something that only Congress has the right to do fro a Federal service.
The issue here isn't the filing as such, it's the fact the PTO made a decision which is outside their power and will now cause Elm extra costs. On a point of law the judge will have to decide as to whether to reject the filings for IPR, or if they stand whether the PTO might be liable for a portion of the legal costs now involved.
Yep, Director Lee used poor terminology, which is a lawyer's wet dream.
I wonder if she did that because she had declined to budget for a replacement generator system to keep the office running? Tried to weasel out of being blamed for not having a business continuity system in place and got sued instead. Good one. IF that is what happened. Gotta have something to daydream about on a Friday morning.
"With the power out, it would not have been. So the PTO extends deadlines for filings to make up for the outage."
On the other hand...
Mother: Why were you late home?
Kid: The bus was late/broke down/in an accident
Mother: So why didn't you get the earlier bus?
Yeah, I know, it sounds trite but it's planning ahead and building in slack time to allow for unforeseen eventualities. Unless there was a good reason for filing on the last legal day, why should an official body make allowances because of the operation being unexpectedly closed for a couple of days.
That mother/kid argument is weak. To be more in line with this situation, it would be like the mother changed the door locks an hour before the kid was supposed to be home, then when the kid can't get into the house until well after curfew she says "Why didn't you leave earlier to get home before the locks changed?"
Elm 3DS is just a patent troll. If you do a search for "elm 3ds innovations" the entire first page of results shows nothing but lawsuits. No company website, not LinkedIn profiles for employees... Just lawsuits. Suing the patent office because your patent complaints are being responded to is even more evidence you're a troll, and patent trolls are what's killing true innovation.
Do staff have to repay the wages "earned" those two days, or did they lose two other real Holiday days they would have been off?
Can't understand why he didn't just classified it as an "emergency", well within his right to do so. Seems there's more to this than meets the eye.
Any thing which, like a postal service interruption, prevents the Patent Office from processing correspondence or filings on a day on which someone conscientiously presenting them by the deadline would submit them, is clearly exactly the sort of emergency the legislation was talking about. Hopefully that is how the courts will also see it.