(More) Change in the Patent System

 In an article published in the August 1, 2017 edition of the American Bar Association Preview, Kelly Casey Mullally and Coby S. Nixon analyze the patent-related decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2016-2017 Term. The article discusses how the Supreme Court continued to take on a number of cases dealing with patent issues and made sweeping course corrections to the trajectory of patent law. Ms. Mullally and Mr. Nixon focus on three particular decisions where the Court abolished the defense of laches as applied to claims for damages in patent cases, imposed new restrictions on the venues in which domestic corporate defendants may be sued for patent infringement, and put an end to patentees’ ability to contract around the patent exhaustion defense. The article explains that “[t]he Court’s radical changes to such long-standing rules and practices serve as a cautionary reminder against treating anything in patent law as truly settled.”