Brinckerhoff Comments to Law360 on SCOTUS Patent Cases

Partner Courtenay Brinckerhoff was quoted in the Law360 article, “Supreme Court IP Recap: Patents” which recapped patent cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in the term which just ended.

Brinckerhoff discussed the 6-3 decision in Return Mail Inc. v U.S. Postal Service, in which the justices stripped federal agencies of the ability to challenge patents under the AIA, holding that the government is not a person under the law and thus not permitted to file such challenges. 

Brinckerhoff told Law360 that the government filed only 20 petitions under the AIA, so it appears not to be particularly interested in patent challenges, and the impact of the decision will probably be quite limited. “If you look at the number of cases the U.S. government pursued, there weren’t that many,” she said. “It seems like something U.S. agencies had not used very much, and now they won’t be able to.”