IP Law Daily, PATENT NEWS: Dolby petitions Supreme Court over Federal Circuit’s decision regarding real parties in interest, (Mar 2, 2026)

By Carolin Dennis, B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M.

The Federal Circuit’s decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s precedents and imposes requirements inconsistent with the law, the petition alleges.

In a petition for certiorari, Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation (Dolby) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to scrutinize a Federal Circuit decision concluding that patent owners have no right to know all real parties in interest (RPI) to petitions brought against them and suffer no injury from deprivation of that information. Dolby contends that the Federal Circuit erred in finding that it failed to establish an injury in fact sufficient to confer Article III standing (Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 25A713, No. 25A713 (U.S. Feb. 20, 2026)).

Dolby owns the U.S. Patent 10,237,577 (the ’577 patent) for an in-loop audio filter prediction method. Unified Patents, LLC (Unified) is a nonpracticing, for-profit, membership-based entity that files inter partes review (IPR) petitions to benefit its paying customers. Unified has filed more than 200 IPRs, it has never named a single member-customer as a real party in interest to any of its petitions. Notably, Unified has admitted it filed the IPR petition without any threat or concern of infringement or royalty obligations of its own. Instead, it brought the petition only to further the interests of its unnamed customers.

Here, Unified petitioned for IPR challenging certain ’577 patent claims as anticipated and obvious. Unified certified it was the sole RPI under 37 C.F.R. § 42.8(b)(1); however, Dolby said it identified nine other entities that Unified ought to have named as RPIs (alleged RPIs). Before the PTAB, Dolby demonstrated the patentability of the challenged ’577 patent, which improves complex video encoding methods to reduce error and increase compression efficiency. Dolby also presented extensive evidence that Unified is not the sole real party in interest to the petition, and that nine other entities are unnamed RPI. Dolby asked the PTAB to name those entities to the IPR so that Dolby could establish quiet title against them.

The PTAB’s decision upheld the patentability of the ’577 patent, but refused to reach any determination on the RPI, despite § 312(a)(2)’s statutory requirement. Thus, the PTAB denied Dolby the full scope of the estoppel benefit it had obtained by successfully defending its patent. The Federal Circuit denied Dolby’s appeal, holding that a patent owner is not injured by an incomplete identification of the RPI acting against it, and that § 314(d) separately bars review. The Federal Circuit emphasized that the America Invents Act (AIA) contains no “special statutory cause of action” for adjudicating disputes over the RPI. Further, the Federal Circuit relied upon § 314(d)’s appeal bar to conclude that the AIA precludes judicial review of decisions concerning the RPI requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 312(a)(2). Additionally, the Federal Circuit held Dolby was not injured because it is not barred from asserting estoppel against the Alleged RPIs in hypothetical future litigation.

In its Supreme Court petition, Dolby presents two questions for review: (1) Whether a patent owner is injured by the PTAB’s refusal to require a petition to identify all real parties in interest; and (2) Whether § 314(d) bars judicial review of a final decision regarding real parties in interest.

Dolby argued that the Federal Circuit, which is the only Court of Appeals that interprets § 312 of the AIA, ignored the text, structure, and history of that statute. Dolby also contended that the statutory context confirmed that the identification of the RPI is a requirement and nothing in the text of § 312 grants the PTAB any discretion to waive or ignore this requirement.

Further, the petition emphasizes the broader legal significance of the issue, arguing that because the Federal Circuit has exclusive nationwide appellate jurisdiction over appeals from the PTAB, the Federal Circuit’s decision will be ossified as the law of the land absent the Supreme Court’s intervention. Additionally, there can be no square circuit split on this particular statute, and it is unlikely that any future litigant could challenge the Federal Circuit’s decision in view of the binding, conclusive precedent it has set. The result is that patent owners who expend significant cost and effort to successfully defend an IPR proceeding through a final written decision cannot establish, in that same proceeding, the scope of the estoppel benefit they have obtained.

Dolby also contended that providing patent owners with such “quiet title” and protection from “harassment” was the point of the AIA and there is no question that § 312(a)(2) is intended to benefit the owner of the challenged patent. Further, Section § 312(a)(5) specifically requires that all the information supporting the challenge be provided “to the patent owner.”

The petition alleges that the Federal Circuit’s decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s and other federal appeals courts’ decisions about informational standing. Dolby argued that the Federal Circuit failed to cite or discuss the Supreme Court’s contrary decision in SAS Inst., Inc. v. Iancu, 584 U.S. 357 (2018), which held that nothing in § 314(d) withdraws judicial authority to ensure that an inter partes review proceeds in accordance with the law’s demands. Likewise, in Public Citizen v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 491 U.S. 440 (1989) the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff had informational standing even though there was no separate statutory cause of action and the rights at issue there too only arose out of statute.

Dolby argued that the Federal Circuit’s decision further conflicts with the Supreme Court’s precedents governing injury in the context of right to information standing. The Federal Circuit held that Dolby was not injured because Dolby did not show that (1) it will be barred from asserting estoppel against the Alleged RPIs in hypothetical future litigation or (2) that any of the alleged RPIs is engaged in, or intends to engage in, activity that may trigger an infringement suit. The Federal Circuit did not cite any decision to support imposing such requirements. However, Dolby’s showing of injury satisfied the Supreme Court’s precedents and the “settled law” recognized by other circuits. Dolby demonstrated that the information it has been denied must be publicly disclosed by statute and indeed directly disclosed to patent owners by statute and that the deprivation of that information hinders Dolby’s ability to enforce its estoppel rights and obtain quiet title.

Dolby claimed that because of the Federal Circuit’s decision, it remains unaware of the names of the nine entities it has asked the PTAB to identify as RPI to the proceeding. Unified has placed that information under seal, and both the Board and Federal Circuit denied Dolby’s requests to unseal that information. Further, the protective order in this proceeding requires destruction of all sealed information within 60 days of final disposition of this action including the names of the nine entities at issue. As a result, Dolby simply will not know if a future IPR filed against the ’577 patent has been brought by one of the nine entities at issue. Thus, Dolby is more than “hindered” by the deprivation of the information here.

Dolby also contended that it neither challenged the PTAB’s decision to institute a review nor requested that the court disturb or vacate the proceeding, but only sought to obtain the full benefit of successfully defending its patent through a final written decision estopping not only Unified from further challenging the ’577 patent, but also the nine other entities that lurked behind Unified’s petition. Those nine entities funded the petition, benefitted from the petition, and currently remain free to bring their own challenges against the ’577 patent.

The Case is No. 25A713.

Attorneys: Patrick Strawbridge (Consovoy McCarthy PLLC) for Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp.

Companies: Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp.; Unified Patents, LLC

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