Thryv, Inc. v. Click-To-Call Technologies, LP
The Supreme Court ruled that patent owners cannot ask a court to overturn a Patent Office decision to begin reviewing a patent's validity, even when they argue the review was started in violation of a statutory one-year deadline.
The decision means the Patent Office can begin inter partes patent reviews — and cancel a patent's claims — without any court being able to check whether the agency followed its own time limit for accepting such review petitions.
How it got here: The Patent Office's board canceled patent claims after inter partes review; the Federal Circuit (on rehearing) vacated that decision as untimely under §315(b); Thryv sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Inventor Stephen DuVal's patent on anonymous telephone call technology was licensed to a company that sued Thryv's predecessor for infringement in 2001; that case was dismissed without prejudice. More than a decade later, Thryv petitioned the Patent Office to review the patent's validity through a process called inter partes review. The patent owner argued the petition was filed too late under a one-year statutory time limit, but the Patent Office proceeded anyway and canceled most of the patent's claims.
The question before the Court
Does a federal patent law banning appeals of the Patent Office's decision to start a patent validity review also block courts from hearing a challenge claiming that review was launched in violation of a one-year time limit?
The Court's answer
No — courts cannot review the Patent Office's decision that an inter partes review petition was timely filed. The patent laws say the agency's "determination . . . whether to institute an inter partes review . . . shall be final and nonappealable." Because the one-year time limit in §315(b) directly governs whether a review "may be instituted," a challenge to that time limit is simply another way of arguing the agency should not have started the proceeding — squarely within the no-appeal rule.
The Court reinforced this with the statute's design: allowing timeliness appeals would unwind completed agency proceedings, revive patent claims the Office found invalid, and frustrate Congress's goal of efficiently clearing bad patents from the books. Even where the government conceded the review was improperly started, the Court held that courts have no jurisdiction to correct the error. The question is entrusted entirely to the agency.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Patent owners facing inter partes review — an administrative process that cancels patents at a high rate — lose a key tool for defending themselves: courts cannot hear claims that the review was started too late. Even if the Patent Office admits the petition was untimely, there is no judicial remedy. Enforcement of the one-year time limit falls entirely to the agency the rule is meant to constrain.
What changes now
The Federal Circuit's decision vacating the Patent Office's cancellation of Click-to-Call's patent claims is itself vacated, and the case is sent back with instructions to dismiss Click-to-Call's appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The Patent Office's original ruling — canceling 13 patent claims — is restored. Going forward, patent owners who believe an inter partes review petition was filed too late have no judicial remedy; policing the one-year time limit falls entirely to the Patent Office.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly declined to decide whether a writ of mandamus might be available in an "extraordinary case" to address an unlawful institution decision. The opinion also does not resolve whether constitutional challenges or other issues reaching beyond the institution decision might still be reviewable in court under different circumstances.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Thomas
Justices Thomas and Alito joined all of Justice Ginsburg's majority opinion except Part III-C, which bolsters the textual holding by invoking Congress's broader purpose of efficiently weeding out bad patents. By declining to join that section, they signaled that the statutory text alone is sufficient to reach the result, without relying on legislative purpose or policy consequences as additional reinforcement. They wrote no separate opinion.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch argued that §314(d)'s no-appeal rule covers only the one determination described within §314 itself — the Director's initial merits assessment under §314(a) — and not challenges to the §315(b) time bar, which is a firm limit on agency authority housed in a different provision. He contended the Court misread Cuozzo (treating dicta as binding) and quietly overruled SAS Institute. He also argued the strong presumption favoring judicial review of agency action should preserve patent owners' access to courts. In Part V (which Justice Sotomayor did not join), Gorsuch broadened his critique, arguing the decision compounds the constitutional error of Oil States by further insulating executive cancellation of private property rights from independent judicial oversight.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began with §314(d)'s text, which makes the Patent Office Director's 'determination . . . whether to institute an inter partes review under this section' final and nonappealable. That language broadly bars any appeal arguing the agency should have refused to start a review proceeding.
- In the 2016 case Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee, the Court had already held that §314(d) blocks judicial review of challenges 'closely tied to the application and interpretation of statutes related to' the institution decision — not just challenges to the specific merits-threshold test in §314(a). The Court applied and reaffirmed that holding here.
- Section 315(b)'s one-year time limit is expressly a condition on institution — the statute says an inter partes review 'may not be instituted' if the petition is too late. Because §315(b) governs only institution and nothing more, a challenge based on it is nothing more than an argument that the agency should not have started the proceeding, placing it inside §314(d)'s appeal bar.
- The statutory design reinforced the textual conclusion: allowing patent owners to appeal on timeliness grounds would unwind completed patentability proceedings and restore canceled claims to enforceability — defeating Congress's goal of efficient patent quality review. The Court also noted that even a time-barred petitioner's conduct does not prevent the Office from canceling the same claims if a different petitioner asks.
- The Court distinguished SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu (2018), which had allowed judicial review of how a review proceeding was conducted after institution. Here, the patent owner was challenging whether the agency should have instituted review at all — a different question that §314(d) squarely covers. The Court also rejected the argument that the challenge could be reframed as an appeal from the Board's final written decision, because the substance remained a challenge to the institution decision.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee (579 U. S. ___)
Reaffirmed that §314(d) bars judicial review of challenges closely tied to the institution decision, extending that rule to §315(b) timeliness challenges.
Distinguishes SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu (584 U. S. ___)
Distinguished as allowing review only of how a proceeding proceeds after institution, not whether it should have been instituted at all.