Monday, June 12, 2017

Breaking News: U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case on Constitutionality of Inter Partes Review

This is not directly related to patent remedies, but it is an important piece of news.   The U.S. Supreme Court this morning grant certiorari in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene's Energy Group, LLC, Case No. 16-712, to review the following question:  "Whether inter partes review—an adversarial process used by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to analyze the validity of existing patents—violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury."  Inter partes reviews, for those of you outside the U.S. who are not familiar with them, are an administrative procedure (enacted as part of the 2011 America Invents Act) for challenging the validity of issued patents.

Hat tip to Professor Dmitry Karshtedt for bringing this to my attention.

Update:  Here is a link to Scotus Blog's page for this case, from which you can download the cert petition, the briefs filed to date, etc.   Here is a link to the order list, which shows that the Court granted cert. as to the petitioner's first question (the one quoted above) only.

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