PTAB Year in Review – 2024 PTAB Case Highlights

Abuse of Process and/or Sanctions – 37 C.F.R. § 42.12

Spectrum Solutions LLC v. Longhorn Vaccines & Diagnostics, LLC, IPR2021-00847, IPR2021-00850, IPR2021-00854, IPR2021-00857 & IPR2021-00860 

Decision modifying-in-part order granting petitioner’s motion for sanctions – Paper 143 (public version of confidential Paper 142) (Vidal July 26, 2024)

The Director ordered review sua sponte in several proceedings where the Board sanctioned patent owner for deliberately withholding and concealing factual evidence relevant to patentability. The review addressed the questions of what regulations are implicated when a party withholds factual evidence during an AIA proceeding, whether an adverse final written decision deeming claims unpatentable is an appropriate sanction for such withholding, and whether any other sanctions may be appropriate. The Director determined that 37 C.F.R. Part 11 (concerning representation of others before the USPTO) and Part 42 (concerning PTAB trial practice) were implicated, but 37 C.F.R. § 1.56 (duty to disclose information material to patentability) was not. The Director further determined that the Board had the authority to hold claims unpatentable as a sanction, and that holding seven claims unpatentable as a sanction – out of 183 claims at issue, the rest of which were unpatentable on the merits – was proportionate to patent owner’s “egregious conduct [that] included serious violations of multiple regulations,”¹ referring to patent owner’s withholding of material evidence that was inconsistent with its arguments in favor of patentability of the challenged claims. Finally, the Director held that lesser sanctions such as additional opportunity for discovery, compensatory expenses, and attorney fees would be insufficient for the case at hand without ruling them out for less egregious misconduct. The Director accordingly affirmed the Board’s sanction of entry of adverse judgment as to all challenged claims.

OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01064

Order granting motion for fees – Paper 147 (public version of confidential Paper 141) (Vidal January 22, 2024)

The Director issued an order granting a motion for fees after the Federal Circuit resolved both parties’ appeals and remanded the case back to the USPTO to resolve remaining sanctions issues. In the order, the Director drew a distinction between patent owner’s billing statement, created from patent owner’s counsel’s time records made contemporaneously with work done earlier in the proceeding, and “after-the-fact reconstructions”² of time found insufficient to support attorneys’ fee awards in other cases. The Director accordingly found patent owner’s billing statement to be acceptable evidence for the purpose of calculating an attorneys’ fee award as a sanction for petitioner’s misconduct, including discovery misconduct, disregard for the Director’s prior orders, and other unethical conduct. The Director also rejected petitioner’s argument that patent owner should not be awarded attorney’s fees under the doctrine of unclean hands. Petitioner alleged that patent owner had unclean hands from misrepresenting fact and law, but the Director determined that the alleged misrepresentations had been addressed separately in an earlier Director order and therefore had no bearing on the sanctions for petitioner’s conduct.

Decision granting-in-part petitioner’s request on rehearing of order granting motion for fees – Paper 149 (Vidal March 11, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request to modify the order granting the motion for fees, the Director agreed to modify the order to require payment of the awarded fees after the conclusion of all related appeals, rather than 30 days after the date of the order. However, the Director rejected petitioner’s argument that the fee award was improperly calculated. Petitioner argued that the order granting the motion for fees did not show a “but for” link between specific misconduct and the awarded fees. The Director determined that petitioner’s “but for” causation argument was unduly narrow. The Director concluded that the order set forth a sufficient link between petitioner’s misconduct and the subsequent work for which patent owner was awarded fees, noting that the relevant authority grants the fact-finder “discretion and judgment”³ in assessing such a link. Subsequently, patent owner filed an amended notice of appeal⁴ and petitioner filed a second notice of appeal⁵, both for the purpose of challenging the Director’s decision.

Bar Due to Patent Owner’s Action – 35 U.S.C. § 315(b)

Luminex International Co., Ltd. v. Signify Holdings B.V., IPR2024-00101

Order vacating decision denying institution, and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 12 (Vidal August 20, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board determined Menard was a real party in interest that petitioner failed to identify in the petition, and that 35 U.S.C.  § 315(b) barred institution because Menard had been served with a complaint alleging infringement of the challenged patent more than one year before the petition was filed. The Board panel’s basis for finding Menard to be a real party in interest was that, in its answer to the complaint, Menard asserted as a defense that “Menard’s suppliers will indemnify and defend Menard in this action,”⁶ and then filed a third-party complaint against petitioner asserting entitlement to indemnification. Petitioner filed the petition for inter partes review less than one year later. The Director vacated the panel’s decision, finding that the record evidence did not establish that Menard was the real party in interest. The Director also determined that the record evidence did not establish that Menard was a “privy of the petitioner,”⁷ which the Board panel did not consider but which would also have resulted in the petition being time barred under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b). The Director also stated that she would issue a subsequent opinion detailing her reasoning for her determinations. On remand, the Board granted institution of inter partes review.⁸

Director Review supplemental opinion  –  Paper 20  (Vidal November 21, 2024)

In her subsequent opinion, the Director stated that the “heart of the real party in interest inquiry is focused on whether a petition has been filed at a party’s behest.”⁹ The Director then characterized the indemnity agreement at issue as evidencing a “fairly standard customer-manufacturer relationship regarding the accused product” that “does not support an inference that the Agreement gives Menard the opportunity or ability to control this IPR proceeding or Petitioner’s filing of the Petition.”¹⁰ The Director relied on these same characteristics of the indemnity agreement to support the conclusion that the agreement did not create the kind of pre-existing legal relationship that would have made Menard a privy of petitioner. The Director found that these facts distinguished Ventex Co., Ltd. v. Columbia Sportswear North America, Inc., IPR2017-00651, Paper 152 (PTAB Jan 24, 2019) (precedential), where the Board found that an indemnification agreement coupled with an exclusive manufacturer-customer relationship between the petitioner and a third party supported a conclusion that the third party was a real party in interest. The Director found this distinction appropriate as a matter of policy to avoid encouraging patent owners to file complaints against indemnified resellers with the intent to avoid IPR challenges by indemnifying manufacturers.

Claim Construction

PLR Worldwide Sales Ltd. v. Flip Phone Games Inc., IPR2024-00133

Decision vacating decision denying institution, and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 12 (Vidal August 22, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board determined that the record did not show a reasonable likelihood that petitioner would prevail with respect to any claim. The panel’s determination was based on a finding that the prior art in the petition failed to disclose a “non-promotional background object”¹¹ in a mobile video game as recited in the challenged claims. The panel nonetheless found that the alleged “non-promotional background object” in petitioner’s prior art failed to meet the definition of that claim term because it was not “unexpectedly interactive.”¹² Because the panel’s analysis hinged on assumptions about what a user would or would not expect, the Director determined that the decision not to institute involved a claim construction that “was improperly based on the subjective perspective of the user.”¹³ The Director accordingly vacated and remanded the decision with instructions to resolve the proper construction of the term “non-promotional background object.” On remand, the Board referred to intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, including a dictionary definition of the word “background,” to construe the claim term “background” as meaning “the part of a pictorial representation that is not in the foreground.”¹⁴ Based on that construction, the Board granted institution of inter partes review.¹⁵

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Slyde Analytics, LLC, IPR2024-00040

Decision vacating decision denying institution, and remand-ing for further proceedings – Paper 14 (Vidal August 2, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board determined that the record did not show a reasonable likelihood that petitioner would prevail with respect to any claim. After observing that neither party provided a construction for the claim term “processor,” nor did the specification of the challenged patent set forth a definition for that term, the Board turned to the definition for “processor” in The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms (7th e. 2000).¹⁶ Based on that definition, the Board construed “processor” to be something that executes code, a program, or instructions. The Board then concluded that the alleged “processor” in petitioner’s prior art failed to meet that construction. The Director determined that the Board had failed to adequately consider two pieces of intrinsic evidence: (1) that the Board’s construction of “processor” would have rendered one of the limitations in challenged claim 14 redundant to another, and (2) that the specification’s mention of “a processor or other processing means for executing programmable software code” implied that the term “processor” as used in the challenged patent does not necessarily refer to something capable of “executing programmable software code.”¹⁷ The Director accordingly vacated and remanded the decision with instructions to resolve the proper construction of the term “processor.” On remand, the Board relied on the same passage of the specification to again construe “processor” as something configured to execute programmable code and denied institution of inter partes review.¹⁸

ASSA ABLOY AB v. CPC Patent Technologies Pty, Ltd., IPR2022-01006, IPR2022-01045 & IPR2022-01089

Decision vacating Final Written Decision and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 49 (Vidal March 15, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s final written decision that petitioner had failed to show any claim in multiple related patents to be unpatentable. The Board panel’s decision was based on a construction of a claim term that did not match either party’s proposed construction. The Board gave the same claim term its plain and ordinary meaning in a preliminary construction in its institution decision, but adopted a new construction in its final written decision. The Director stated that “under the APA, the Board may not change theories midstream by adopting a different claim construction in the final written decision than that adopted in the institution decision without giving respondents reasonable notice of the change and the opportunity to present argument under the new theory.”¹⁹ The Director accordingly vacated the final written decision in each proceeding and remanded the proceedings with instructions to authorize petitioner and patent owner to file briefs addressing the Board’s new construction for the term in question. On remand, the Board arrived at a different construction of the claim term in view of briefing from the parties, but again found that petitioner had failed to show any claim unpatentable.²⁰

Expert Testimony

MAHLE Behr Charleston Inc. v. Frank Amidio Catalano, IPR2023-00861 

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 15 (Vidal April 5, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board found that a drawing in one of petitioner’s prior art references failed to teach a sacrificial anode placed within 10 inches of a hot liquid inlet to a radiator because the prior art reference was silent as to the scale of the drawing. The Board also dismissed petitioner’s expert’s testimony that a skilled person would have interpreted the drawing in question as showing the sacrificial anode and hot liquid inlet at the same place, and therefore necessarily less than 10 inches apart, as an attempt “to back-fill with opinion testimony a prior art disclosure that does not suggest a required feature of the claimed invention.”²¹ The Director agreed that back-filling a prior art reference with opinion testimony would be improper, but disagreed with the Board’s finding that petitioner had attempted to do so since the relevant expert testimony had not been provided without “additional supporting evidence or … technical reasoning.”²² Instead, petitioner’s expert testimony related to how a skilled person would have interpreted elements that were shown on the face of the relied upon prior art drawing, and “[t]he Board should have thoroughly evaluated this argument and evidence.”²³ The Director accordingly vacated the decision and remanded the case with instructions to the Board to consider whether petitioner’s expert testimony provides sufficient “technical detail, explanation, or statements supporting”²⁴ the expert’s determination. On remand, the Board considered, but ultimately disagreed with, the expert’s determination and denied institution again.²⁵

Institution/Multiple Petitions

Videndum Production Solutions, Inc. v. Rotolight Limited, IPR2023-01218

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 12 (Vidal April 19, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying decision, the Board weighed the General Plastic factors to determine whether to exercise discretion to deny institution in view of an earlier inter partes review that had been instituted on similar grounds to those raised in the present petition, but had been voluntarily terminated due to a settlement before the present petition was filed. The panel majority and the dissent agreed that petitioner had no significant relationship with the filer of the earlier petition. However, the panel majority “plac[ed] particular relevance on the third factor”²⁶ (“whether at the time of filing of the second petition the petitioner already received the patent owner’s preliminary response to the first petition or… the Board’s decision on whether to institute review in the first petition”) and determined that the circumstances weighed in favor of denying institution, while the dissent found the opposite. On review, the Director determined that “where… the first and second petitioners are neither the same party, nor possess a significant relationship under Valve, General Plastic factor one necessarily outweighs the other General Plastic factors.”²⁷ Noting that General Plastic concerned two petitions filed by the same petitioner and Valve extended the General Plastic framework to petitioners having a “significant relationship,” the Director observed that General Plastic had never been extended to denying a second petition filed by an entity having no relationship to the filer of the first petition. The Director accordingly vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to issue a decision on institution based on the merits of the petition. On remand, the Board considered the merits of the petition and granted inter partes review.²⁸

Ford Motor Company v. Neo Wireless LLC, IPR2023-00763²⁹

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 28 (Vidal March 22, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board weighed the General Plastic factors and decided to exercise discretion to deny institution. The Board’s decision was based in part on a determination that petitioner had a “significant relationship” (which petitioner disputed) under Valve with the filer of an earlier petition (Volkswagen) because petitioner and Volkswagen were co-defendants in related litigation, and because petitioner had used the earlier petition as a roadmap for its own. The Director found no such significant relationship between petitioner and Volkswagen on the basis that the parties found to be related in Valve were both co-defendants in litigation and were accused of infringement based on the same product, for which the parties had an ongoing licensing relationship. Without expressly deciding the accuracy of the Board’s characterization of petitioner and Volkswagen as a co-defendants, the Director distinguished the facts in Valve on the basis that petitioner and Volkswagen had not cooperated in any relevant matter except in court-ordered pretrial coordination in the related litigation. The Director also noted that petitioner and Volkswagen were accused of infringement based on different products, and therefore had relatively little alignment in their interests. The Director accordingly vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to issue a decision on institution based on the merits of the petition. On remand, the Board considered the merits of the petition and granted inter partes review.³⁰

Multiple Proceedings – 35 U.S.C. § 325(d)

Nokia of America Corporation v. Alexander Soto and Walter Soto, IPR2023-00680, IPR2023-00681 & IPR2023-00682

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 18 (Vidal March 28, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board applied the Advanced Bionics framework to determine whether to deny institution under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d). Finding in the first part of the framework that substantially the same art and substantially the same arguments previously were presented to the Office and in the second part of the framework that petitioner had not demonstrated that the Office erred in a material manner, the Board exercised discretion to deny institution. On review, the Director determined that the Board had not sufficiently addressed petitioner’s arguments related to the first part of the Advanced Bionics framework. The Director observed that the petition first pointed out differences between its prior art and the prior art cited by the Examiner, and second explained how those differences led to a different proposed combination and motivation to combine argument than that raised by the Examiner. The Director found that the Board failed to address petitioner’s arguments as to either aspect of the first part of the Advanced Bionics framework by “simply stat[ing] that it was unpersuaded”³¹ without explaining which of petitioner’s relevant points it disagreed with. The Director also found that the Board’s analysis, which reduced both the ground in the petition and the Examiner’s rejection to “a first reference cited for electrical signal processing components combined with a second reference cited for pluggable form factors,”³² improperly focused on the claim limitations rather than the underlying art and arguments. Accordingly, the Director vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to reassess whether discretionary denial was appropriate. On remand, the Board again determined that petitioner presented substantially the same art and arguments as previously presented to the Office without demonstrating that the Office erred, and denied institution.³³

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 30 (Vidal December 3, 2024)

On remand, the Board denied institution again. Petitioner filed a second request for Director Review, and the Director again vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. This time, in the underlying panel decision, the Board explained that it considered the petitions to present substantially the same art and arguments that were overcome during prosecution in part because both petitioner’s and the Examiner’s prior art references lacked a “pluggable optical transceiver.” The Director found the Board’s analysis insufficient for failing to address the fact that Applicant had distinguished the Examiner’s primary reference by arguing that it lacked an optical transceiver at all, pluggable or otherwise, whereas it had not been disputed that petitioner’s primary references disclosed an optical transceiver. The Director also addressed patent owner’s arguments that discretion should be exercised to deny institution under § 314(a) because of the state of parallel district court proceedings, which had not been resolved in the previous Board decisions or Director Review. The Director found that three of the six Fintiv factors were neutral, but on balance the factors weighed against denying institution. While factor 2 (“proximity of the court’s trial date to the Board’s projected statutory deadline for a final written decision”) weighed slightly in favor of denial because the Board’s final written decision would be “likely to issue a few months after the currently scheduled district court trial date,” the Director found that factor 3 (“investment in the parallel proceeding by the court and the parties”) and factor 4 (“overlap between issues raised in the petition and in the parallel proceeding”) together weighed more heavily against denial. Factor 3 weighed against denial because fact discovery, expert discovery, and claim construction briefing had not concluded, and factor 4 weighed “marginally” against denial because petitioner had submitted a Sand Revolution stipulation, agreeing not to “pursue invalidity against the asserted claims in the district court proceeding using the specific combination of prior art references set forth” in the petitions. Accordingly, the Director vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to reassess whether denial was appropriate.

Obviousness – 35 U.S.C. § 103

Hesai Technology Co. Ltd. v. Ouster, Inc., IPR2023-01458

Decision vacating decision on institution and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 14 (Vidal July 25, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s decision denying institution. In the underlying panel decision, the Board determined that petitioner had not shown that a prior art reference disclosed an arrangement of detectors because petitioner had relied on an arrangement of 36 elements shown in one of the reference’s drawings, but the reference’s specification described the illustrated device as including 32 detectors. The Board concluded it could not assume the cited elements in the drawing were detectors because of that discrepancy. The Director disagreed, noting that “where a prior art reference includes an obvious error of a typographical or similar nature… the errant information cannot be said to disclose subject matter,”³⁴ but “the remainder of the reference would remain pertinent prior art disclosure.”³⁵ The Director determined that the Board had erred by relying on an apparent typographical error in the prior art reference to disregard the disclosure of the relied upon drawing. The Director further found that the Board had erred by disregarding the drawing because the discrepancy in the specification related to the quantity of detectors, but petitioner had relied on the drawing for the arrangement of detectors it plainly showed. Accordingly, the Director vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to consider the non-errant portions of the relied upon drawing.

Obviousness/Secondary Considerations

Nearmap US, Inc. v. Eagle View Technologies, Inc., IPR2022-00734

Decision vacating Final Written Decision and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 43 (Vidal February 20, 2024)

In response to petitioner’s request for Director Review, the Director vacated the Board panel’s final written decision that no claims were shown unpatentable. In the underlying panel decision, the Board determined that patent owner’s evidence concerning secondary considerations of nonobviousness under the fourth Graham factor outweighed the strength of petitioner’s grounds of invalidity. In making this determination, the Board did not resolve the construction of a claim term for which the parties advanced two different interpretations. The Director found that the Board had failed to conduct all necessary analysis because the final written decision’s treatment of the petition’s grounds of invalidity amounted to “present[ing] a summary of petitioner’s contentions and indicat[ing] that the Board considered petitioner’s contentions and evidence in reaching the ultimate conclusion of nonobviousness. However, the Board did so without providing any analysis or explanation to convey its reasoning.”³⁶ Based on that finding, the Director concluded that the Board had not sufficiently explained why the fourth Graham factor should outweigh the other three. The Director also found that the claim construction issue bore on the weight of patent owner’s evidence relating to secondary considerations of nonobviousness such that the proper construction should have been resolved before balancing the Graham factors. Accordingly, the Director vacated the Board’s decision and remanded with instructions to set forth a claim construction and a full analysis of all Graham factors. On remand, the Board reconsidered petitioner’s arguments and found all challenged claims unpatentable.³⁷

[1]IPR2021-00847, IPR2021-00850, IPR2021-00854, IPR2021-00857 & IPR2021-00860, Paper 143  at pg. 54 (P.T.A.B. July 26, 2024).
[2] IPR2021-01064, Paper 147 at pg. 6 (P.T.A.B. January 22, 2024).
[3] IPR2021-01064, Paper 149 at pg. 6 (P.T.A.B. March 11, 2024).
[4] IPR2021-01064, Paper 150.
[5] IPR2021-01064, Paper 151.
[6] IPR2024-00101, Paper 12 at pg. 3 (P.T.A.B. August 20, 2024).
[7] Id. at pg. 4.
[8] IPR2024-00101, Paper 14 (P.T.A.B. September 9, 2024).
[9] IPR2024-00101, Paper 20 at pg. 8 (P.T.A.B. November 21, 2024) (quoting Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Facebook Inc., 989 F.3d 1018, 1028 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
[10] Id. at pg. 12.
[11] IPR2024-00133, Paper 12 at pg. 2 (P.T.A.B. August 22, 2024).
[12] Id. at pg. 6.
[13] Id. at pg. 7.
[14] IPR2024-00133, Paper 14 at pg. 16 (P.T.A.B. November 29, 2024).
[15] Id. at pg. 55.
[16] IPR2024-00040, Paper 14 at pg. 6 (P.T.A.B. August 2, 2024).
[17] Id. at pg. 10.
[18] IPR2024-00040, Paper 17 at pg. 17 and 30 (P.T.A.B. October 10, 2024).
[19] IPR2022-01006, IPR2022-01045 & IPR2022-01089, Paper 49 at pg. 5 (P.T.A.B. March 15, 2024) (Quoting Axonics, Inc. v. Medtronic, Inc., 75 F.4th 1374, 1381-82 (Fed. Circ. 2023) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
[20] IPR2022-01006, Paper 64 at pg. 81 and 100 (P.T.A.B. August 13, 2024); IPR2022-01045 & IPR2022-01089, Paper 59 at pg. 83 and 105 (P.T.A.B. August 13, 2024).
[21] IPR2023-00861, Paper 15 at pg. 8 (P.T.A.B. April 5, 2024).
[22] Id.
[23] Id. at pg. 8–9.
[24] Id. at pg. 9.
[25] IPR2023-00861, Paper 18 at pg. 7-12 and 19-20 (P.T.A.B. May 24, 2024)
[26] IPR2023-01218, Paper 12 at pg. 5 (P.T.A.B. April 19, 2024).
[27] Id. at pg. 6 (Emphasis added, with “factor one” referring to the question of “whether the same petitioner previously filed a petition directed to the same claims of the same patent”).
[28] IPR2023-01218, Paper 15 (P.T.A.B. October 16, 2024).
[29] See also American Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. Neo Wireless LLC, IPR2023-00797, Paper 27 (P.T.A.B. March 22, 2024) and General Motors LLC and Nissan North America, Inc. v. Neo
Wireless LLC, IPR2023-00962, Paper 16 (P.T.A.B. March 22, 2024).
[30] IPR2023-00763, Paper 30 (P.T.A.B. September 11, 2024).
[31] IPR2023-00680, IPR2023-00681 & IPR2023-00682, Paper 18 at pg. 6 (P.T.A.B. March 28,
2024).
[32] Id. at pg. 7.
[33] IPR2023-00680, Paper 26 at pg. 36 (P.T.A.B. July 31 2024); IPR2023-00681, Paper 28 at pg. 34 (P.T.A.B. July 31 2024); IPR2023-00682, Paper 26 at pg. 34 (P.T.A.B. July 31 2024).
[34] IPR2023-01458, Paper 14 at pg. 7 (P.T.A.B. July 25, 2024).
[35] Id. at pg. 8.
[36] IPR2022-00734, Paper 43 at pg. 7-8 (P.T.A.B. February 20, 2024).
[37] IPR2022-00734, Paper 51 at pg. 28 (P.T.A.B. July 15, 2024).

This article appeared in the 2024 PTAB Year in Review: Analysis & Trends report.