How the Courts Have Changed the Patent Law

The patent law statutes may be amended only rarely, but practically speaking, patent law changes fairly often as a result of court decisions in major patent infringement cases. This chapter discusses several key court decisions and their effect on patent law. For example, the famous Bilski case concerned whether business methods should be patentable but also had broader implications for software patents. Other examples of lawsuits that changed patent law include eBay, which raised the question of whether a nonpracticing entity (NPE) has the right to a permanent injunction after prevailing in a patent trial; Seagate, which made it more difficult to obtain a finding of willful infringement in a patent suit; and KSR, which raised the question of how to determine whether a patent is obvious.