Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Hayman Capital: A Hedge Fund That Challenges Patent Validity

This article in today's Wall Street Journal is not directly relevant to the subject of patent remedies, but I thought it was pretty interesting and that readers of this blog might find it interesting too.  A hedge fund called Hayman Capital petitions for inter partes review (IPR) of certain drug patents while shorting the patent owner's stock (betting the price will go down).  (IPRs, a creation of the America Invents Act, are a means for challenging the validity of issued patents within the USPTO.)  An article in today's Bloomberg BNA Patent, Trademark & Copyright Law Daily (available here, but behind a paywall) discusses one Hayman-instituted challenge in particular.   Although the CEO of one of the firms asserts that IPRs have created "reverse patent trolls," I'm inclined to think that if the challenged patents are subject to invalidation, the fund is serving the public interest in challenging them; but I need to give the matter some more thought.   I wonder if there are any other firms like this, in the U.S. or elsewhere?

No comments:

Post a Comment