Heather Tilley

Filing a petition for inter partes  review (“IPR”) is a standard part of the playbook for defendants in patent litigation. One of the few risks for a petitioner is estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2), which prohibits a petitioner who is unsuccessful on the merits from raising in district court “any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review.” By rule, a petitioner can only assert patents or printed publications as prior art in an IPR.

We are delighted to introduce this very special issue of 19 on the topic of ‘Victorian Beauty’ in honour of Professor Hilary Fraser. It is particularly fitting that 19 should be the vehicle for this Festschrift as it was Hilary who started the journal — the first online journal in nineteenth-century studies — in 2005.1 Hilary was born and educated in East London.