The Supreme Court’s decision Monday in a closely watched patent law case is a defeat for the pharmaceutical industry, which had urged the justices to rule the other way.
The case had nothing to do with prescription medications and centered on the minutiae of patent law. But drug makers had placed the stakes of the case in dire terms. The industry’s trade group warned in its briefs that an Obama administration’s rule, challenged in the case and upheld by the court on Monday, “breeds uncertainty and stifles innovation” in American medicine.
At issue in the case was a new process for challenging patents created by Congress in 2011. Known as inter partes review, they allowed patent challenges to be heard by an appeals board within the US Patent and Trademark Office.
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