By Kristen Osenga Cross-posted with permission from Professor Osenga’s December 8, 2025, LinkedIn article I’ve seen a lot of misinformation circulating online lately about patents and their role in drug prices. Some articles – like this one – claim that so-called “patent thickets” are an abusive strategy drug companies use to keep prices high. The […]
Category: Patent Theory
The following post comes from Colin Kreutzer, a 2E at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at CPIP. By Colin Kreutzer When most people think of patentability requirements, they think of whether an invention has been “done before.” Novelty and non-obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 are certainly key hurdles to obtaining a […]
What if there is a way for a patent applicant to obtain a “gold-plated patent” that is immune to administrative cancellation before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)? This intriguing notion is the subject of a recent paper by Professor Michael S. Greve of Scalia Law, […]
Recent calls for the government to lower prescription drug prices by overriding patent rights include proposals for the establishment of a marginal cost pricing system in the pharmaceutical industry (and in patent-based markets in general). As a previous article in this series details, some academics and advocates are now suggesting that the government use a […]
By Kathleen Wills* The question whether patents are property rights is a continuing and hotly debated topic in IP law. Despite an abundance of scholarship (see here, here, here, here, and here) detailing how intellectual property (“IP”) rights have long been equated with property rights in land and other tangible assets, critics often claim that […]
By Adam Mossoff & Bhamati Viswanathan In a recent New York Times op-ed, “The Patent Troll Smokescreen,” Joe Nocera used in print for the first time the term, “efficient infringement.” This pithy phrase quickly gained currency if only because it captures a well-known phenomenon that has been impossible to describe in even a single sentence. […]
By Adam Mossoff and Kevin Madigan Following the Supreme Court’s four decisions on patent eligibility for inventions under § 101 of the Patent Act, there has been much disruption and uncertainty in the patent system. The patent bar and most stakeholders in the innovation industries have found the Supreme Court’s decisions in Alice Corp. v. […]
The following post, by Robert R. Sachs, first appeared on the Bilski Blog, and it is reposted here with permission. It’s been one year since the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. On its face the opinion was relatively conservative, cautioning courts to “tread carefully” before invalidating patents, and emphasizing that the […]
By Patent Publius Earlier this month, the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in Ariosa v. Sequenom, a closely-watched biotechnology case with significant repercussions for patent-eligibility analysis generally. Unfortunately, the Federal Circuit misapplies the Supreme Court’s analytical framework from Mayo v. Prometheus, striking down Sequenom’s important innovation for the prenatal diagnosis of fetal abnormalities. The shame […]
In the last two weeks, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees marked up wide-ranging patent legislation ostensibly aimed at combating frivolous litigation by so-called “patent trolls.” But while the stated purpose of the House and Senate bills—H.R. 9 (the “Innovation Act”) and S. 1137 (the “PATENT Act”), respectively—is to combat abusive litigation, a closer look […]