The Supreme Court's Quiet Revolution in Induced Patent Infringement

39 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2015 Last revised: 9 May 2016

See all articles by Timothy R. Holbrook

Timothy R. Holbrook

University of Denver Sturm College of Law

Date Written: August 29, 2015

Abstract

The Supreme Court over the last decade or so has reengaged with patent law. While much attention has been paid to the Court’s reworking of what constitutes patent eligible subject matter and enhancing tools to combat “patent trolls,” what many have missed is the Court’s reworking of the contours of active inducement of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). The Court has taken the same number of § 271(b) cases as subject matter eligibility cases – four. Yet this reworking has not garnered much attention in the literature. This article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the Court’s efforts to define active inducement. In so doing, it identifies the surprising significance of the Court’s most recent case, Commil USA, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., where the Court held that a good faith belief on the part of the accused inducer cannot negate the mental state required for inducement – the intent to induce acts of infringement. In so doing, the Court moved away from its policy of encouraging challenges to patent validity as articulated in Lear, Inc. v. Adkins and its progeny. This step away from Lear is significant and surprising, particularly where critiques of the patent system suggest there are too many invalid patents creating issues for competition. This article critiques these aspects of Commil and then addresses lingering, unanswered questions. In particular, this article suggests that a good faith belief that the induced acts are not infringing, which remains as a defense, should only act as a shield against past damages and not against prospective relief such as injunctions or ongoing royalties. The courts so far have failed to appreciate this important temporal dynamic.

Keywords: Commil, induced infringement, grokster, sony, akamai, limelight, global-tech, patent infringement, induced patent infringement, injunction, lear, medtronic, mirowski, medimmune, declaratory judgment, validity, patent validity, post grant review, inter partes review

Suggested Citation

Holbrook, Timothy Richard, The Supreme Court's Quiet Revolution in Induced Patent Infringement (August 29, 2015). Notre Dame Law Review, v. 91, pp. 1007-1044, 2016, Emory Legal Studies Research Paper No. 16-397, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2653077 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2653077

Timothy Richard Holbrook (Contact Author)

University of Denver Sturm College of Law ( email )

2255 E. Evans Avenue
Denver, CO 80210
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.law.du.edu/about/people/tim-holbrook

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