An Interview with Chief Judge David Ruschke of the PTAB

• Author: Kevin R. Greenleaf
• Position: Kevin R. Greenleaf is a patent attorney with Dentons and specializes in post-grant proceedings. He serves the ABA and broader IP community in several capacities and can be reached at kevin.greenleaf@dentons.com.
• Pages: 33-36

Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 9, Number 3, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2016 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This

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An Interview with

Chief Judge David Ruschke

of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

By KevinR. Greenleaf

David P. Ruschke is Chief Judge for the Patent and Trial Appeal Board (PTAB). He was appointed to the position in May

2016. As chief judge, Dr. Ruschke leads the PTAB which is authorized to conduct post-grant trials following the passage of the

American Invents Act in 2011. Dr. Ruschke manages the PTAB as it conducts trials, including inter partes, post-grant, and cov-

ered business method patent reviews and derivation proceedings, hears appeals from adverse examiner decisions in patent

applications and reexamination proceedings, and renders decisions in interferences.

In his previous role, Dr. Ruschke managed the intellectual property portfolio of Medtronic’s CSH business unit, with sales

in excess of $3 billion. As chief patent counsel, Dr. Ruschke participated in numerous patent appeals, interferences, post grant

reviews, inter partes reviews, and covered business method patent reviews. He gained extensive experience in post-grant pro-

ceedings in Europe and participated in third-party contested proceedings before administrative agencies and courts around the

world. He has signicant experience in shaping and integrating teams of professionals, as well as managing a workforce that

is geographically dispersed. Prior to joining Medtronic, Dr. Ruschke practiced with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.,

where he litigated claims of patent infringement. Dr. Ruschke’s judicial experience includes clerking for Chief Judge Glenn L.

Archer, Jr. and Circuit Judge Arthur J. Gajarsa at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Dr. Ruschke received his

JD from Georgetown University Law Center, and holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology and a BS in chemistry from the University of Minnesota.

What are your priorities for the Patent Trial and Appeal

Board (PTAB) during your tenure?

Certainly, one of the biggest priorities I have is to make sure

that our backlog on ex parte appeals continues to decrease over

time. Our goal is essentially to get that to a one-year pendency.

If I’m not mistaken, right now we are covering around a two-

year pendency and the backlog itself over the last scal year

dropped from about 21,000 appeals to 16,000 appeals.

The reason I put that rst is because everybody always

wants to talk about the America Invents Act (AIA), which

is very important, but I have to remind everybody that AIA

Kevin R. Greenleaf is a patent attorney with Dentons and

specializes in post-grant proceedings. He serves the ABA and

broader IP community in several capacities and can be reached

at kevin.greenleaf@dentons.com.

reviews or ex parte appeals are really our bread and butter.

Two-thirds of our judges, and essentially two-thirds of our

work, involve the ex parte appeals process. So, we are proud

of the progress that we’ve made, and we hope to continue that

going forward. I think getting the appeals backlog down to a

reasonable one-year pendency level will be a really important