Late last month, USPTO Director Kathi Vidal issued an interim guidance on the NHK-Fintiv rule, limiting the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) ability to discretionarily deny institution in America Invents Act (AIA) reviews based on the status of parallel litigation. The PTAB has now issued its first batch of institution decisions applying that guidance, in each case declining to discretionarily deny institution based on those new restrictions—including one limitation meant to address concerns over the most controversial of the NHK-Fintiv factors, as detailed in RPX’s new Q2 in Review.

eBuddy Technologies, a Netherlands-based mobile messaging software company, has filed its first lawsuit, against Microsoft (LinkedIn) (1:20-cv-01501) in the District of Delaware. Four patents, generally related to either contact aggregation or event notification, are asserted, with eBuddy Technologies targeting the defendant over features for syncing contacts and creating event notifications on the LinkedIn platform.