Kyle E. Conklin is a director in Sterne Kessler's Mechanical & Design Practice Group. He counsels clients at all stages of the patent cycle. He helps clients enforce patent rights, navigate the existing patent landscape, and obtain patent protection.
His enforcement work focuses primarily on Section 337 Investigations at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), as well as patent validity proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Kyle represents both patent owners and third parties in patent office litigation proceedings at the PTAB, including reexaminations and inter partes reviews (IPR). Many of these PTAB proceedings are involved in concurrent district court litigation and ITC litigation. His patent office litigation experience includes:
- Implementing a multi-faceted defense involving multiple inter partes reviews and ex parte reexaminations for a manufacturer accused of infringing patents directed to remote patient monitoring;
- Successfully canceling all challenged claims directed to transcatheter heart valves in inter partes reexaminations;
- Successfully canceling all claims of a patent directed to an angioplasty guide catheter in an inter partes reexamination involved in concurrent district court litigation; and
- Successfully confirming, twice, the patentability of all patent claims directed to a delivery system for transcatheter heart valves in ex parte reexaminations.
At the procurement stage, Kyle drafts and prosecutes patent applications. He develops client-specific patent strategies that take into account his clients’ commercial products, competitors, and market. He has drafted and prosecuted patent applications in a variety of technologies including medical devices, consumer products, oil and gas equipment, automotive control systems, health-monitoring systems, physiological sensors, surgical devices, dental products, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), lithography systems, fiber-optic distribution systems, hard disk drives, and industrial equipment.
Kyle is also a contributing author of Patent Office Litigation, Second Edition, published in 2017, the book provides a fresh and comprehensive exploration of patent office litigation proceedings, including how the proceedings interact with other aspects of patent procurement and enforcement, while delivering practical analysis and advice. This second edition of Patent Office Litigation is the follow up to the first version of the book that was published in 2012 by Thomson Reuters Westlaw that focused on the contested proceedings that were introduced under the America Invents Act that year.